Test's rare beauty undiminished by the sinking of the Durban sun

In the dying light of Durban there was no reason to mourn the absence of that stroke of victory which would, when you thought about it, have turned to dust at least half of some of the most inspiring cricket produced in the annals of the Test game.

England may take a little longer to be persuaded along such philosophical lines. Despite the Voortrekker resilience of Graeme Smith's team, it was after all they who still held the whip-hand - and the best chance of a stunning straight ninth victory.

However, it was still more to their credit that, in the end, their decision to stay on the field after umpires Simon Taufel and Darrell Hair offered South Africa salvation seemed less a one-eyed protest than a dogged refusal to give up on the possibility of a victory that had seemed so remote after the first two days.

Indeed, cricket, after being brilliantly served for five days of never less than intriguing action, had a final gift in the conduct of both players and officials when it was decided to end action that could scarcely have been more compelling.

Absent was the rancour and self-interest which so relentlessly disfigures and diminishes our other national game.

England's captain, Michael Vaughan, did say that he would have appreciated the option of bowling himself and Ashley Giles, but then he also conceded that he might himself have taken the initiative when he saw Steve Harmison tattoo the fingers of Shaun Pollock in successive deliveries. "The light was bad and I don't think we would have enjoyed facing Steve," conceded the captain.

For the armchair spectators - as opposed to the Barmy Army which, whatever the subtleties of the drama, chants homage to itself in a way guaranteed to deliver serious cortical damage to those unfortunate enough to be in direct ear-shot - the wholeness of the experience was hugely enhanced by the superb quality of the commentary.

Nothing heard from the broadcasting booth in the course of this Test match did anything to deflect from the view that the England cricket authorities made an appalling mistake when they gave Sky the exclusive contract, but it is a point of huge principle rather than any comment on the efforts of the company. In practice, the Sky performance is a fitting companion to the efforts of the England team.

David Gower, Nasser Hussain, Ian Botham and David Lloyd all provided particularly impressive analysis of the decision of Taufel and Hair to offer the South Africans the light. They created an immediate climate of rationality and Gower, particularly, was quick to point to the consistency of the action. Hussain, whose Test career is considerably more recent, perhaps inevitably saw the situation from the viewpoint of his old team-mates, claiming that the umpires might have warned Vaughan of their impending action.

However, Gower banished partisanship with great authority - and he was almost instantly vindicated by the impressive coherence of the umpire of the year Taufel. The Australian explained the thinking of Hair and himself briskly, lucidly, and, most vitally, made it clear that it was in perfect line with all current regulations. Can we ever expect as much from the average Premiership referee? After Taufel spoke it was the end of controversy - and the start of anticipation for the Third Test which starts in Cape Town tomorrow. It is surely a delicious prospect at the opening of a new sporting year.

The star of the TV booth so far is Lloyd. He has shed completely the "Bumble" image that came to him when he was England coach and filling the dressing room with wave upon wave of Jerusalem and insisting that disaster in Zimbabwe was a case not of shocking failure but a perverse lack of reward for "murdering" the locals. You could see this when he best touched on the glory of this fierce engagement between the fastest-rising team in Test cricket and a South African side fighting to halt the slide that has taken them into sixth place in the world league table.

Lloyd seized on an exchange between two of the great figures of this unforgettable collision - man-of-the-match Jacques Kallis and Andrew Flintoff.

Kallis, moving into gear for arguably his best Test century, was caught in two minds by a magnificent ball from the Englishman: his face was a picture of concern. Then he broke into a smile of recognition. Flintoff plainly took pride from the moment and Lloyd chirped, "That's what sport at this level should be all about... two heavyweights knocking hell out of each but never losing respect." You might have said Amen to that a dozen times as the advantage shifted one way and then another.

Andrew Strauss, Marcus Trescothick and Graham Thorpe were immense as England won back the high ground. The entire bowling unit answered the call with vital contributions, and if they failed to deliver the win only the dullest spirit could be slow to recognise the quality of the resistance they faced yesterday. Jacques Rudolph, who as Botham pointed out, would have been saved by video evidence, Martin van Jaarsveld, A B de Villiers - surely a major arrival - and Pollock all fought with brilliant commitment.

It fell to Botham to make the jokey point that perhaps the greatest victim of all when the light died was Makhaya Ntini, who hammered Harmison for 16 in an over. Did Ntini, who was discovered by a coach whose first practical assistance was to provide him with boots that didn't make his feet bleed, really dream of becoming the most romantic Test hero of all? Probably not, given the speed with which he accepted the chance to go back to the pavilion.

However, he too trailed glory at the end of some of Test cricket's finest hours. The light may have failed, but there was a rare beauty in the dusk.