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Wickets are the inspiration. For so long during South Africa's innings they had looked smug and impregnable. But then at half-way, Gary Kirsten and Herschelle Gibbs had gone, and suddenly Jacques Kallis's off-stump was hanging away from the other two as if lightning had struck.

Watching live, you didn't need a TV replay to freeze it in the retina. A match that had been on the amble was now ablaze. The blue-clad Englishmen rushed into a victorious huddle around their wicketkeeper-captain at the far end and the crowd cheered with such abandon that even the world's laziest pigeons took off temporarily to circle around Kallis's helmetless head. And all the time the stumps stayed in their shattered state in some cricket rigor mortis.

The image had seemed so unlikely. For all the intensity of competition on the pitch, what strikes you is the continued civility off it. Across the river to the north-west, the crowds would be getting ready to chant and sing with all the tribalism that only a Cup Final can bring. But here the full house was studious and attentive. Ten stewards in chairs were spread around the edge of the ground on streaker alert. While South Africa batted little stirred.

It's the knowledge that these games can turn so suddenly which provides their unending fascination. From a somnolent crowd getting ready to be taken to the cleaners as South Africa settled in, this was a packed stadium of home supporters believing that they might actually humble their mighty opponents.

Bliss there was as those wickets fell. The memory of Kallis's wrecked castle hung in the mind as Daryll Cullinan and then Hansie Cronje both went. Then the real fun began as Darren Gough once again showed why he is our most inflammatory weapon of all.

First he had Jonty Rhodes caught in the covers and then, next ball, the typical Gough coup de gr‰ce. Not just Shaun Pollock out for a duck but his middle stump knocked out clean. Two stumps where three should be.

Even though South Africa were 168 for seven, the presence of the massive Lance Klusener at the wicket was much muttered about as a portent of an impending onslaught at the death. But the whirlwind never came.

True, he got 48 from 40 balls but in truth he only really connected the once. Some once, a massive six which hit a shade straighter he would have put half a dozen laptops out of commission in the press box. Yet time and again the bowlers put the ball right in the blockhole and the best he could do was a dug-out single to mid-on.

We English watchers had a comfy feeling that 225 was a gettable target. There was time to have a drink and let the dream of those shattered stumps drift happily back into the head. Even the worst pessimist could not have predicted that another sight would banish all others from the mind. The sight of umpire Venkat's finger.

He holds it up in such a peculiar way, high out to his right, that for a wonderful mini-moment you thought he might just be testing the irritating Oval wind that tugged at his trousers. But this was more than irritation. This was to tell us that Alec Stewart had a march back to the pavilion with the same zero runs that Kallis and Pollock had added to their name. We thought this was bad but worse was to come.

We could take that upraised digit once, but to have the same haunting image for Nasser Hussain only two overs later was a bit much to bear. Six for two and a finger in the wind. Your mind tells you that Graham Thorpe and Graeme Hick have salvaged foundering vessels before but the heart had dread in it. The stumps had been the inspiration but now a finger had taken hold.