Crowd flock to see an execution but Collingwood earns himself a reprieve

Public hangings used to attract terrific crowds, and yesterday they flocked to Edgbaston as they had failed to do on the first two days of this riveting Test match.

There was a whiff of regime change in Birmingham's gusting wind, a sense that an epoch, if not quite ending, was being irrevocably defined. A cortege of dark clouds passed by. But the day ended in sunshine and celebration for Paul Collingwood, a singular and very single-minded cricketer. This might have been his last Test innings. It will not be now.

John Major, the former prime minister and a pragmatic man who famously ran away from a circus to join a bank when he was young, was here yesterday and he did not have to raise a moist fore-finger to tell which way the wind was blowing for Michael Vaughan, the England captain, and a number of other players if they failed.

Kenneth Clarke, the former chancellor of the exchequer, was here too, a man who knows a thing or two about fiscal management and someone who could have advised England batsmen that bankrupts should not behave like millionaires.

The England selectors still know that, if their side is beaten again here, they will have to start selecting, instead of ticking up the same old names like a bored form master taking registration. The status quo will no longer have much status.

They did a bit of picking recently, with the remarkably left-field choice of Darren Pattinson for the Headingley Test, and look where that got them. It was akin to a devotedly faithful husband's single, drunken aberration on a Saturday night.

Kenneth Tynan, who came from Birmingham, once described a neurosis as a secret you don't know you are keeping and there has been a desperate, hand-wringing, neurotic aspect about England's batting in recent times.

When the batsmen came to the crease yesterday they looked like accused men entering the dock. For two of them, Vaughan and Collingwood, the pressure was intense. One failed yet again; the other succeeded in the most heroic of circumstances. When Vaughan came in, a little earlier than he would have wished at 15 for one, he had averaged 29.53 in 19 innings since the end of last summer and 24.71 in 13 knocks this year.

South Africa did their best to help him. Andre Nel served up a leg-stump half-volley for him to get off the mark and then Makhaya Ntini sent down a long hop and Vaughan, even in his current diminished state, knows how to pull a cricket ball.

He promised fluency. He scored 17 from 18 balls, with four fours. He almost sent another delivery skimming to the boundary but instead it was caught inches off the ground by the diving Hashim Amla at extra-cover.

Then, after Andrew Strauss and Ian Bell were out cheaply, Collingwood came in, his mind as scrambled as an anagram, a good cricketer who had forgotten how to play on the evidence of his poor showing in this match - this season, in fact.

As the clouds dispersed, we had the best of the day in every sense. Kevin Pietersen and Collingwood put on 115 for the fifth wicket in 23 overs to set up what could be a winning position for England.

Collingwood looked as stiff as the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz but slowly, as the runs came, he visibly grew in confidence. He tried to play through his favourite midwicket area even when the ball was not there for the shot, like a man in trouble searching for his talisman. When he reached his fifty, pushing the ball into

the covers for a single, he received a standing ovation. Pietersen was his usual outrageous, magnificent self. Soon England were 100 ahead. The crowd swelled with beer and growing optimism. Could England stand this match on its head after all?

Pietersen fell, caught at deep mid-on. It was a foolhardy shot against an ordinary bowler, Paul Harris, and a fielder positioned specifically for that purpose. And when Andrew Flintoff was out in the same over, in came Tim Ambrose, yet another man fighting for his own career as well as England's chances in this game. There was a sense of anti-climax. The day had almost come full circle.

With a lead of 138 England were still very much second favourites for this match but Collingwood forged another partnership with Ambrose and reached his century by doing something even the vastly more talented Pietersen could not achieve, lofting Harris over long-on for six. England might win this match and the series.

Ambrose, nudging, clipping and scampering, lent him excellent support but at the end of the day it was Collingwood, a cricketer who has been reprieved, who was warmly congratulated by the sporting South Africa players.