What Gladiatorial combat in middle showcases is best for Test arena?”
With Twenty20 windfalls seemingly around every corner, testing loyalties and moving boundaries, Test cricket has never feared more for its future. Yet in the fading light of a damp evening yesterday came a classic gladiatorial battle to reaffirm the longest form of the game as the true measure of its highest values. Andrew Flintoff against Jacques Kallis was the heavyweight contest the promoters of this series always hoped would seize top billing and at the end of a day of relentless sparring it grabbed its moment, bringing the crowd to its feet with a crescendo of telling blows. Happily, from England’s point of view, most of them were landed by Flintoff, the talisman of Michael Vaughan’s team recalling the heights of his Ashes campaign of 2005 as he opened his opponent’s defences to deliver the classic counter-punch. It meant that, just as he was threatening to put England back on the ropes after a passage in which they had manfully regained some of Wednesday’s lost momentum, Kallis w
