IT seemed a little too much to hope that having bowled Australia out for 118 last year on the opening day of the Test series, England could repeat their success against South Africa 12 months on. They did, despite being obliged to bat first in conditions nicely suited to swing bowling, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

Making fools of those who had doubted his ability to press on with a successful Test career after resigning the captaincy, Mike Atherton batted throughout a cool and cloudy day to reach his 12th Test hundred and England, 249 for one by the close, have made an ideal start to a series of immense significance to the well-being of the game in its homeland.

If there were four Englishmen at Edgbaston yesterday who needed more than anyone else to succeed they were the groundsman, Steve Rouse, the new captain, Alec Stewart, and the opening pair, Atherton and Mark Butcher. Each one had a day to remember with rare pleasure against South African bowling which, Paul Adams apart, grossly lacked any consistency of length and direction. Their five fast or fast-medium bowlers scattered the ball about like seed in a high wind.

Atherton, admitting to more nerves than usual but giving yet another demonstration of his character and technical ability, played not just soundly but also authoritatively until a breakback from Allan Donald with the second new ball in the final over of the day brushed past his waist and gloves and showed what might have happened to England six hours earlier.

Having spun a coin in the morning, the new captain took no further part until 35 minutes after tea, which, hyperactive though he is, suited him very nicely. Belying his reputation for doing the conventional, Stewart then marched out at number three, rather than his official position of four. Fortuitously, the only wicket fell when Nasser Hussain was having a rest from watching closely with his pads on and Stewart was still at the crease 23 overs later.

Apart from an inside edge to get off the mark, he batted with familiar skill and assurance after Butcher, a borderline selection, had shared with Atherton an opening partnership of 179. A slightly heedless sweep off Paul Adams to deep backward square-leg deprived the captain's brother-in-law of the real chance of a maiden Test hundred but Butcher played the fast bowlers with skill and judgment after surviving a justifiably confident appeal for lbw from Shaun Pollock when playing half forward in the 10th over of the morning.

Only to that extent were England fortunate as South Africa blew their chance spectacularly before a crowd liberally sprinkled with schoolchildren. The South Africans' vaunted fast men seemed not to know how to bowl at the stumps, which, as every cricket-educated child knows, is a bowler's first duty.

England took admirable advantage. The opening partnership was England's best in the opening match of a series since the famous stand between Len Hutton and Charlie Barnett at Trent Bridge against Australia in 1938. More recently, it was the best since Atherton and Graham Gooch put on 203 at Adelaide in 1990 in perfect batting conditions and the highest in the first innings of a Test for 21 years.

Quite why the South Africans were so untypically profligate - England would have bowled first, too, if the coin had spun the other way - is hard to fathom. The ball seamed off a soft, slow pitch and swung outrageously in the afternoon but none of the quicker bowlers seemed to have any control.

If England had bowled as Donald and Lance Klusener in particular did yesterday, they would have been criticised to the point of ridicule in some quarters. Had Russell Tiffin, the Zimbabwean umpire, not been generous to the bowlers in his judgment of wide balls, and rather mean to the severely taxed wicketkeeper, the extras would have exceeded 41.

Simply to denigrate the bowlers, however, would do Atherton and Butcher no justice. They avoided the short stuff calmly, each a model of stillness, and once the first and most difficult hour had been safely negotiated, they drove with great assurance though the off-side and picked up runs neatly off their legs. Pollock alone threatened the batsmen with any regularity but his best balls were just too short to catch the outside edge.

Donald gave way to Klusener, Pollock to Hansie Cronje without any increase in menace and the captain had little option but to give Adams a chance 10 minutes before lunch, which England took, relieved, at 67 without loss.

The pace of scoring picked up in the afternoon once Butcher, initially uncomfortable against Adams, began to glance and clip him behind square. The stroke which finally undid him, eight overs after tea, was the only one he hit in the air during four-and-a-half hours of encouraging batting.

There have been quicker outfields at Edgbaston but a lordly square-cut by Atherton off Jacques Kallis, one of his 12 fours, confirmed his view that this is the most even pitch produced by Rouse since he took over as Edgbaston's groundsman in 1994. He had doused it with 4,000 gallons of water in early May to make sure that there was no repeat of the cracked surface for which he was so criticised in 1995.

It is worth cautioning that Glenn McGrath was almost as inconsistent as Donald in the Edgbaston Test last year before taking eight wickets in an innings at Lord's. There were signs with the second new ball that Donald, perhaps striving too hard on his home ground, may be more of a handful today. His average pace was measured yesterday at 84 mph, Klusener's the same and Pollock's at 82, but it is direction which counts at this level.

Day 2: England remain in command but injury brings Gough grief

AN untimely injury to Darren Gough's bowling hand - a broken index finger - gave an unexpected and possibly very significant twist to a chilly but gruelling second day of the Edgbaston Test. England were not bowled out until almost 7pm, looking for quick runs only when the tailenders were together after a late afternoon shower, but although Allan Donald eventually earned a four-wicket analysis, their total of 462 is one for their own fast bowlers to work with, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

Unless the weather changes completely over the next two days the ball should continue to swing lavishly and seam sufficiently for the quicker bowlers, but it looked very unlikely last night that Gough would be able to lead Angus Fraser, Dominic Cork and Mark Ealham in the attempt to exploit the opportunity for a victory in the first Test which their batsmen had worked painstakingly to create.

Batting in fading light, Gough was struck by one of many fast, lifting balls bowled by Donald. He stayed to play some bold shots after two squirts of pain-numbing spray but the result of an X-ray at a local hospital last night was bad news because these are conditions ideally suited to his brand of fast, swing bowling and he has recently been in the form to make the most of them.

England sought all day to turn the screw on South Africa, but even without Gough, the weekend's cricket will show whether it took them a little too long to do it. Even in the one-day cricket era, when the first instinct of most batsmen is not to accumulate but to force the pace, Test matches are often won by attritional cricket and this one may yet be a case in point, but in scoring at 2.5 runs an over, England at times rather overdid the old-fashioned professionalism. More energy and less lethargy might have served them even better

To a large extent the pace of events was dictated by a much- improved bowling performance by South Africa, led by Paul Adams, the sturdy little left-armer from Cape Town. He was supported by tigerish groundfielding, with Jonty Rhodes and Gary Kirsten especially to the fore. But once Nasser Hussain, last year's Edgbaston hero, had fallen to the kind of rogue ball which he has attracted with unfortunate regularity of late, there was an element of native English caution about the tactics. It was if England had rather surprised themselves by building their almost invincible position on the first day and were determined to give nothing to their opponents.

Nothing ventured, of course, nothing gained. In the end rain decided the first match of the last series between these two countries, at Centurion Park when England, put into bat in helpful bowling conditions just as they were here, made 381 for nine off 143 overs before the weather rendered all debate academic. Graeme Hick and Jack Russell were the two who managed to rise above the generally sluggish rate of scoring on that occasion but for the time being at least (and despite Hick's four hundreds in succession) they are yesterday's men.

Not that England need be dissatisfied with a total in excess of 450 in conditions which continued to be almost perfectly suited to South Africa's fast bowlers. They lost the last nine wickets for 213, despite the useful boost given by the frenetic slog at the end of the day by Fraser and Gough which delighted the majority of the full house who had stayed on despite an hour's stoppage for rain.

They were restricted to 168 for six before the rain but that could have been a far more rapid decline, given some of the collapses in the Caribbean. Haunted by the capitulation at the very end of the Test series in the West Indies - when seven wickets went down for 26 runs after tea on the final evening - the selectors and the coach, David Lloyd, had chosen their side, notably Ealham, Cork and Robert Croft, partly with a view to making England more resolute in the second half of the batting order.

Lloyd was therefore pleased enough at the way that most of the batsmen had to be prised out yesterday after Donald had given South Africa the swift strike they so desperately needed by getting a ball to lift to Mike Atherton in the second over, cramping him for room as he aimed to force off the back foot. Instead he sliced a catch to the wicketkeeper, leaving Hussain and Alec Stewart, to tackle fresh fast bowlers with a virtually brand new ball.

Donald showed no sign of discomfort from a sore left ankle which had required a pain-killing injection before he took the field. He and Shaun Pollock used the second ball far better than they had the first, consciously striving for a fuller length and relaxing more, perhaps, in the knowledge that the ball would swing without extra effort. Balls made by Duke are being used in this series, by England's choice. The best reason for that is that their bowlers are familiar with them: all but three of the 18 counties now prefer these to the other English-made ball, the Reader; its propensity for reverse swing when it gets older currently attracts Glamorgan, Lancashire and Kent.

The first day's events suggested that Donald and Pollock had probably had too little bowling since the tour began, which reflects poorly on the judgment of South Africa's tacticians. Stewart and Hussain, who announced himself quickly with a classic off-drive and a crunching hook off Pollock, did well to resist them, only for both to fall to less feared competitors before lunch.

Stewart, who had lost his early fluency, drove a little stiffly at a ball of full length from Lance Klusener and edged it to first slip. An over later Hussain was lbw to a shooter from Adams which could only be bad news for South Africa in the longer term.

There was no ball like it afterwards but Adams bowled with excellent control for 17 overs at the City End from five overs before lunch until 20 minutes before tea. His economy was crucial because there were none of the first day's easy pickings from the quicker bowlers and Graham Thorpe, who might have disrupted Adams, was defeated by a devilish inswinging yorker measured at 87 mph.

Ealham spent 39 balls over five before Adams drifted a ball under an attempted on-drive but Mark Ramprakash, batting with quiet skill after coming in three overs before lunch, played the bowling strictly on its merits.

It took the new ball and a pearler from Donald which left him late to signal the last phase of the innings, one in which Dominic Cork batted with encouraging maturity before slashing a drive to third-man.

Day 3: Lively Cork keeps tourists on back foot

By Scyld Berry at Edgbaston

IF, in two months' time, England look back and sigh that they missed a realistic opportunity to win their last major Test series in this millenium (their most recent win was in 1986-7), they will surely see Edgbaston as the moment when they failed to stamp their authority on South Africa.

England were the first side to build up some momentum in this series, thanks to their outstanding defensive batsmanship on the opening day, and then they lost it, off their own bat. England have a new captain. Their approach to Test cricket remains the cautious same.

England lost their momentum on the second afternoon, after lunching at 321 for four, when they scored 61 from 33 overs. If they win this match, their policy of scoring as many as possible in their first innings, no matter how slowly, will have been justified; if they do not win it, they will have helped South Africa to get back into this series.

The South African seamers bowled substantially better and more fully on the second day, and their ground-fielding was brilliant as it stopped England scoring at even two runs an over. But England's approach was still pedestrian, more so than any other Test side's would have been, and to turn the most patriotic crowd at any Test ground in England into slow-handclappers and ironic cheerers by the fifth session of a home series is no mean achievement.

Fortunately for England, the pitch offered their seamers occasional steep bounce yesterday, so that if the rain does not spoil the rest of this match, England's end - a victory - would still justify those cautious means. But if they do not win, their efforts here will be all too reminiscent of their recent Tests in Bulawayo and Auckland, when they dawdled towards the end of their first innings. Subsequently they claimed to be one run away from victory in the first instance, and one wicket away in the second, but in essence England were a positive strategy away from winning.

And if they are troubled later in this series by either Paul Adams or Lance Klusener, the roots of their discomfort can be traced to Edgbaston. The pitch has been lively for pace bowlers throughout, and yesterday offered some surprising bounce and turn to Robert Croft. Yet on the second afternoon, when Adams had no such encouragement, he bowled 17 overs unchanged for 26 runs and two wickets without a batsman once using his feet to attack him.

Klusener had under-pitched and under-performed on the opening day. On the second, after lunch, England could not have done more to rehabilitate his confidence as the back-up to Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock, his 15 overs conceding no more than 29 runs. England have yet to learn how to keep a opponent down when he is fallen.

England's hope remains the pitch, which behaved well on the first two days with its new and even covering of grass but yesterday returned to its capricious Edgabston self. Some of the extra bounce obtained by Dominic Cork and Angus Fraser was inordinate. It will be a relief if only Darren Gough's index finger is on the list of breakages - so lengthy after the West Indian Test here in 1995 - by the end of this game.

But unfortunately for England, while the pitch played into their bowlers' hands, the ball would not swing for them. After more than one year out of the England side, Cork has not lost his Bothamish knack of taking wickets, but yesterday, in his first two spells, although he took a wicket in each, there was none of his former outswing, save for one ball which landed too wide for the batsman to play and swung wider; but there was a smidgeon by his third spell, when he dismissed Jacques Kallis with a ball which bounced and left him. Still, through his pace, bounce and energy, Cork did his utmost to make a favourable new impression and make up for the absence of Gough, so sadly sidelined on his return after nine months of frustration.

The cynic, however, would say that the injury saves him from breaking down through over-work: the very day after this game, through some insane arrangment, the majority of England's batsmen have to turn out in the Benson and Hedges semi- finals, and Gough would have been similarly over-extended.

Cork took his first wicket with the help of some poor technique from Gerhardus Liebenberg, who seems so far to have little to offer beyond doggedness (whisper it not to the tourists that they could open with Kallis instead and bring in Brian McMillan at No 3). Liebenberg makes the elementary error of not bending his front knee in playing forward; when he inside-edged Cork, the ball could only bounce upwards off his front pad to short-leg, where the Derbyshire reserve batsman Ben Spendlove was substituting for Gough.

Thereafter there was little to trouble South Africa - until the pitch began to display its caprice. Mark Ealham did not swing the ball either, except rarely, and Fraser does not expect to. In the field England became muted as Gary Kirsten and Kallis dug in: they have no Jonty Rhodes to offer perpetual motion and enthusiasm, while the wicketkeeper, however vocal, is in no position to run around in geeing up his men.

Kallis brought off some handsome strokes, including a perfect, checked on-drive which Fraser stopped just inside the boundary rope, only to slip into it: in the field he is more the Colossus than Rhodes. Then Kirsten thought of cutting Cork, but did not pull out of his shot when the ball bounced, and steered it high to third slip, where Mark Butcher continued to justify his selection.

It was during the Kallis-Daryll Cullinan partnership that the ball started to take off with some regularity. On the first day the pitch had been so damp that the ball had dented it, and now the odd ball has been leaping out of those dents.

England will have a fine chance if they can dismiss South Africa for 262 or less and make them follow on; batting on it a second time, against Pollock and Donald, would not be so pleasant for them.

Croft has not been well-served by his England wicketkeepers. Yesterday afternoon, as tea approached, he pressurised Cullinan into a thoughtless heave from down the pitch, only to see his off-break elude Stewart. Cullinan had made 19 runs, and South Africa 73: a third wicket then, with the follow-on still almost 200 runs away, would have gone some way to justifying England's defensive strategy.

Day 4: England may be left to rue Gough blow

England (462 & 170-8) lead South Africa (343) by 289 runs

Deprived by his broken finger of their main strike bowler, England took 117.3 overs to bowl South Africa out on a pitch of uneven bounce but they made up for lost time yesterday evening with batting of great purpose and enterprise which gave a disapointingly small Sunday crowd of 9,000 a treat so rich and so unlike the rather dour cricket of the first three days that the monotonous chanting in the Rea Bank ceased in wonderment.

Stewart, the new captain, got the ball rolling with three handsome boundaries in his 28 off 34 balls, Thorpe hit magnificently through the covers, not least at the expense of Allan Donald, in making 43 off 59 balls and Atherton was so skittish that he followed a pull-driven four off Paul Adams with a reverse sweep.

Wickets fell but England kept attacking, managing to score at a fastish rate even against Paul Adams bowling over the wicket into the rough a foot or more outside the right-handers' leg stump. The recent ICC resolution to outlaw these tactics will not come into force until October it seems, but the sooner the better.

Lance Klusener, having played a fine innings in the morning, ended the day with a spell of three for eight in 17 balls as England, guilty of an excess of caution in their first innings, opened themselves to possible accusations of recklessness. The advantage of having no one in the side desperate to score runs in order to keep his place was evident, however, in the way that everyone attacked so naturally in the team cause.

The confidence of their approach, and the determination not to let any of the South African bowlers, least of all Donald, settle into any rhythm, was refreshing and surely right, though it has given their opponents a scent of a victory which would have been quite beyond them had England set about their second innings in what might be called a characteristically Athertonian vein.

As the fifth day begins England lead by 289, too few for comfort but sufficient to guarantee a hum-dinger of a day if the weather will only co-operate. Only one second-innings wicket is in hand because of Gough's absence and they will miss him again when they begin the task of trying to take 10 more South African wickets a good deal more quickly than they managed it in the first innings. England will have to bowl very poorly today, or someone will have to play a great innings, if South Africa are to turn the game on its head.

Stewart's belief in attack was demonstrated even at the very end of the day when England chose to go on batting in poor light with only Angus Fraser, in Gough's absence, still to come in. The pitch is a trifle capricious but the ball did not swing nearly so much over the weekend (even for the South Africans) as it had on the first two days and the result may now depend on whether Dominic Cork in particular can find movement though the air as well as off the pitch. After an excellent return to Test cricket his final act last night was to take an almighty swing at a ball from Paul Adams and miss.

Seldom in their history, let alone in recent times, have England been so bold in pursuit of a Test victory as this. It would be wrong to say that their approach rattled Hansie Cronje's team - no side objects to being given relatively easy wickets in a Test match - but they generally fielded better than they bowled and they must have been a little bemused by this sudden English elan.

A further 46 overs of the day remained when England, frustrated also by showers and missing a couple of possible catches, finally bowled South Africa out for 343, giving them a lead of 119. Cork had taken five wickets, including the first four, and Fraser four when the innings ended shortly before tea. Fraser has now taken over 150 Test wickets.

South Africa avoided a follow-on which had at one stage seemed crucial to the outcome by means of an admirably bold but never reckless counter-attack yesterday morning. Jonty Rhodes and Klusener put on 104 in 28 overs after Fraser, with a wicket in the gloaming on Saturday evening and two more in his first four overs yesterday, had reduced them to 224 for seven, still 39 short of their first target. Ben Spendlove, the substitute for Gough, missed Rhodes when he mis-hooked Cork, a difficult catch as he ran in in from long leg, when 15 were still needed.

By lunch the follow-on was saved but Rhodes missed the hundred an innings full of crisply timed strokes had deserved when he got an inside edge to a bouncing breakback from Fraser and Mark Ealham, swinging the ball as he had not on Saturday, ended Klusener's hard-hitting innings when he slashed at a ball well wide of his off stump.

How many more wickets England might have taken than the five they managed on Saturday after the loss of the morning session to rain can only be conjecture. Jacques Kallis and Daryll Cullinan played fine innings despite many blows to their own hands before Cork produced the perfect ball for Kallis, leaving him late off an ideal length. Cullinan, surviving a clear stumping chance off Robert Croft when only 19, was unfortunate to get one of the very occasional balls which kept low before bad light finally brought an end to a day in which ``more than 60'' of the capacity crowd were evicted for drunkenness and loutish behaviour.

Crowd participation and the consequences of Gough's injury will be high on the agenda when the post mortem on the first Test begins. It seems hard to blame Gough, in retrospect, for the injury which has cost him his place in at least the second Test at Lord's and conceivably the third at Old Trafford. His latest enforced absence may increase his chances of making a sustained impact on the Ashes series next winter by ensuring that the present series does not over-extend his apparently powerful but demonstrably vulnerable physique. Nevertheless, it is even odder that a batsman of limited competence, and rather reduced confidence, like Gough should not have taken every precaution.

Donald's fastest ball in this match was measured at 88mph, giving the batsman 0.44 seconds to react. Extra padding, to stop the middle and index fingers of the bottom hand being jammed against the bat handle, has prevented many a recent broken finger. Gray Nichols supplied polyethylene guards to all the England players in the West Indies last winter when no batsman broke a finger. The damage is done as far as Gough is concerned but no one in an England team should be allowed to take similar risks again.

Day 5: No play due to rain.

England finally unearth elusive esprit de corps

by Christopher Martin-Jenkins

IT is sadly academic that England were planning to declare with their lead of 289 before the potentially intriguing final day of the first Test at Edgbaston was abandoned when rain set in heavily in the afternoon, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

No one can know whether South Africa would have been capable of scoring at not much more than three runs an over to win against the head; or whether England, despite being a bowler short, would have been able to bowl them out to win a match in which they had possessed the initiative from first to last.

They had been prepared to lose in order to win, which made it all the more likely that they would have bowled South Africa out, given fine weather, on a pitch of uneven bounce. As Alec Stewart asked: ``How many teams get 290 to win on the final day of a Test match?''

The adage used to be that if three seamers can't do it, four won't. Nine times out of 10 that is probably true, although in the second innings of a five-day Test in which most of the work has been done by faster bowlers, it is asking much of only three men to do the job unless the pitch is giving exceptional help. In yesterday's case, Robert Croft would have to have supplemented Dominic Cork, Angus Fraser and Mark Ealham more effectively than he did in the first innings.

Croft bowled less well than he can, albeit without much luck, whilst Paul Adams's reputation took a decidedly upward turn; but if the weather had allowed them a full 90 overs, or more, England would have had a better than even chance of winning. They were comfortably the more impressive side and there were signs here, as in the West Indies, that a combination of established Test cricketers, now under a fresh leader, has finally established that esprit de corps which will enable them to create, recognise and capitalise upon winning opportunities.

The manner in which they went so uncompromisingly for quick runs on Sunday, with a useful but not invincible first innings lead on which to build, encourages the fancy. Stewart said that everyone was told to play for the side without worrying about his place. That should be normal practice but the realities of professional cricket, especially in England with so many men playing for a living, are that individuals are obliged to play first for themselves. It has been an often unseen weakness of England's national side.

Nor, of late, do they seem to have much luck. Not only did Darren Gough's broken finger leave them without their first-choice fast bowler (Graham Thorpe also bruised a finger batting on Sunday and has only a fifty-fifty chance of playing for Surrey today) but this was the second match in their last three Tests that rain on the last day washed away realistic aspirations of victory. In Barbados, the West Indies needed 304 on the last day with all wickets intact on a pitch taking spin. Here, the target of 290 on one of uneven bounce gave South Africa, as Hansie Cronje admitted, ``only an outside chance''.

There is less danger of missed opportunities preying on the mind in a home series than there is on a tour. It was the Barbados rain and the subsequent capitulation in Antigua which finally made Mike Atherton conclude that he had run out of such luck as he had ever had as a captain and that it was time to attend to his own career as a batsman. The happy result of that is one of several encouraging things that England can take to Lord's for the second Test starting on Thursday week.

Atherton's restored footwork and form apart, the other positives were Dominic Cork's successful return, thoroughly justified by his bowling, his batting and his general demeanour; Stewart's positive lead; and the evidence of that team unity and security for which Atherton strived so hard. The natural corollary is that the selectors should look no further than Dean Headley, 12th man here, to keep Gough's place in the dressing room warm.

They will be tempted to look at other possibilities, of course. There are several younger fast bowlers performing very well for their counties, notably Melvyn Betts, Jimmy Ormond, Paul Hutchison, James Kirtley, Chris Silverwood (when he has been fit) and, one for the future perhaps, Matthew Bulbeck. Of more experienced performers, Ed Giddins and Jason Lewry have begun their rehabilitation and Craig White, Peter Martin, Andrew Caddick and Alan Mullally have all been issuing reminders.

No decisions will be taken before the weekend, by which time a little more may be known about the likely pitch and weather conditions at Lord's. They will have to have changed dramatically for England's strategists to alter their plan to postpone consideration of a second spinner until they encounter what may be a drier pitch at Old Trafford in the first week of July.

After a one-day match at Nottingham tomorrow, the South Africans play Sussex at Arundel by way of preparation for Lord's. Cronje said after the abandonement yesterday that Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock would probably play in the three-day game in view of their unusually erratic performances here. ``Once they find a rhythm I'll be happy for them to rest between Tests,'' he said.

The experience and accuracy of Brian McMillan were missed and at anywhere near his best all-round form, he surely gets into the best Test XI South Africa can field. Unless McMillan opens himself, however, Jacques Kallis would have to do so in place of Gerry Liebenberg, which would leave South Africa without their settled No 3. That would merely be to substitute one problem for another.

There will be a different National Grid umpire at Lord's, Darrell Hair for Russell Tiffin, who made some odd decisions on lbws and wide balls during a difficult match in which David Shepherd's judgment, despite the exaggerated swing and movement off the seam, was superb. One has sympathy for the relatively inexperienced Zimbabwean but it demonstrated the imperfections of the system of an independent panel.

All umpires are still too disinclined to play whenever possible. There was a half-hour gap in the clouds yesterday morning when they might have played at least a little cricket to show willing and to satisfy the optimists who had paid UKP 5 or UKP 10 for entry.