A lot of people have appeared in this Ashes series when less than fully fit: Ashley Giles, Craig White, Brett Lee, Andy Caddick, Graham Thorpe ... and none of them has achieved anything much. The exception to the rule, inevitably, is Steve Waugh. Waugh's decision to come hurtling back from the sick-list and play in this match was utterly out of character: if you were being harsh, you would say it was vain, egotistical and sentimental. It would have been far more Australian, and sensible, and captainly, to give Simon Katich another go. But the way Waugh played once he reached the middle was utterly in character: skilful, calculated, resolute to the point of being implacable. No international cricketer has shown such willpower since Shane Warne last gave up smoking.

Twelve years ago, Waugh played his first Test in England and made a huge unbeaten hundred. He was young, slim, fit and unstoppable. Today he was ageing, portly, injured and still unstoppable. He had never made as many as 30 at The Oval, but the minute that curious fact flashed up on the screen, you just knew he would put it right.

Limping and hobbling, wincing and half-tiptoeing, he was unmistakably still injured. Yet he was also unmistakably himself. Instead of standing and delivering, he knelt and delivered. In the end, after a period of paralysis in the nineties (he always becomes human between 89 and 100), it was slither and deliver. At Trent Bridge this man who takes quite good photographs in his spare time gave us the indelible image of himself sitting on a stretcher trolley. Here, when he acknowledged his hundred while flat on his stomach, he gave us another: a beached whale with a periscope.

His record in England has to be seen to be believed. He has played 22 Tests, and only been out 22 times: 32 innings, 10 not-outs. He has forced, driven, whipped and lashed a total of 1633 runs. He has raised his bat for 11 fifties, seven of them converted into hundreds, and no fewer than four into 150s - all unbeaten. He has an average of 74.23. He is a phenomenon.

Tim de Lisle is editor of Wisden.com.

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