You either know about it or you don't. If you don't, I'm sorry, I can't help you. But you're missing out on one of the more sublime creations of the human imagination. Today, just eight days after this sublime creation of the human imagination yielded a denouement so special that one devotee with whom I talked about it the other evening professed himself unable to watch the thing being re-run, it produced another just as tense and in its own way just as brilliant.
What happened at Old Trafford on the final day of the third Test won't be forgotten by anyone who was there, or indeed by many who weren't.
I am completely wrung out. All day I was sure England would win. Teams so often fold up facing a mountainous task like the one before Australia. Only when it got down to the last 24 balls did I begin to entertain hope. And every ball then became an agony. The crowd was willing England to capture that final wicket, and in truth you felt the wicket had to fall, so thick was the tension and so palpable, so vocal, the support for the home team all round the ground. When it was all over the sense of deflation was enormous. But for me and the Aussies there... well, we'd got out of jail.
Ian, with whom I've watched both of these last two Tests, had to leave at four o'clock, poor guy, to catch a flight; but Mark and I remained, exchanging partisan banter in order to relieve the tension. Last time I was the one disappointed. Today it was his turn.
What a series this is. To have had two such cliff-hanger finishes in succession is hard to credit. We all know that in sport the past was always better than the present. Except that that often isn't true. After three Tests, this series is already up there with the very best, and bound to become part of Ashes legend.
Oh, and this guy - man of the moment, man of the match.
