Mike Atherton remembers the 2005 Ashes Test at Edgbaston

Among his players, Ashley Giles was feeling particularly anxious, having borne the brunt of some fierce criticism in the press after the opening defeat. England were playing with ten men, was the gist of it.

Giles was more easily affected than most and Vaughan knew he needed reassurance. Vaughan recalled that Giles had a “haggard, drained look about him” as if the spinner had been through the mill, and before the match Vaughan sat Giles down to reiterate his value to the team and the confidence the management had in him.

But Giles was not the only player to have endured a poor match at Lord’s.

Vaughan himself was dismissed cheaply in both innings and Andrew Flintoff, while taking two top-order wickets in each innings (including Adam Gilchrist both times from around the wicket), had made nought and three.

Duncan Fletcher and Vaughan had high hopes for Flintoff in this series, but the all-rounder had looked subdued in the opening match.

The lift that the team needed came in two parts before a ball had been bowled.

First, Glenn McGrath stepped on a cricket ball during a harmless game of pass the rugby ball. Matthew Hayden remembered standing next to McGrath when the great fast bowler went down and telling him to “stand up, nuffy!” because McGrath was a renowned practical joker. Then Hayden saw how white McGrath had turned, and knew it was not a prank.

Out in the middle, Gilchrist and Ricky Ponting were inspecting the pitch. Gilchrist saw the commotion and said to Ponting: “McGrath’s down.”

England’s players found out soon enough as they gathered for their own pre-match warm-up routine. Nobody trotted out the old line about wanting to beat the best, rather their (internal) reaction recalled an old team-mate of mine at Lancashire who, when seeing the opposition’s overseas fast bowler clutch his hamstring halfway through an over one day and walk off, shouted from the changing room: “Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial!”

Second, was Ponting’s decision to bowl first at the toss, which England’s players — and Shane Warne — found unbelievable. The toss is often overrated in Test cricket but this one felt, in retrospect, like the moment the series turned. Australia never had their noses in front in that match and, after Edgbaston, never again in the series. From the moment the coin went up in Birmingham, England looked the younger, hungrier and better side.

Why did Ponting so decide? A freakish tornado had hit Birmingham — still the costliest tornado to hit these shores — a week before the start of the match, dumping inches of rain on the ground and raising fears of a soft pitch. No doubt bravado played a part too, with Ponting not wanting to suggest McGrath’s injury would blow them off course.

Although rumours of a dust-up between leg spinner and captain have always been denied, Hayden recalled seeing Warne pacing out of the back of the dressing room after Ponting’s call. England’s players, in their own dressing room, could not believe their good luck. After Flintoff had livened things up by playing Elton John’s Rocket Man at full volume (it was his signature tune of the summer), Marcus Trescothick and Andrew Strauss quickly put any doubts about the pitch to bed with a rollicking opening partnership.

Edgbaston was Flintoff’s 49th Test and, remarkably, only his second against Australia, after Lord’s. At 28 years old he should have been entering his prime but the numbers before the series began — averaging 32 with the bat, 33 with the ball — were not those of a cricketer to be feared. Like many England all-rounders before him, he had seemingly struggled to live up to the tag of the “next Botham”.

Australia knew relatively little of him as a cricketer. Flintoff had missed the 2002-03 series with injury and in ODIs against them he had been underwhelming. In a way this lack of exposure in Tests must have played to his advantage: as with most of the rest of the players, there was no scarring and no expectation. Flintoff’s performance with the bat at Lord’s must have confirmed some preconceptions from Australia’s point of view, though.

Yet what a match he had at Edgbaston. On the first day he came in 40 minutes after lunch; he squeezed his first boundary off Warne over mid-off none too convincingly but then played superbly, hitting four sixes in a run-a-ball half-century, adding a rapid 103-run partnership with Kevin Pietersen. He added three wickets in Australia’s first innings and another barnstorming half-century in England’s second, last man out after coming in at 72 for five, to push the lead to 281.

“The best over I ever faced,” Ponting said later, of Flintoff’s first over in Australia’s second innings: “Classic reverse swing at 90mph!” It was the 13th over of the innings; the score was 47 for none, Justin Langer and Hayden both settled, the chase very much on. Flintoff was on a hat-trick, bizarrely, having taken the wickets of Jason Gillespie and Michael Kasprowicz with his final two balls of Australia’s first innings, but now Langer played the first ball, from around the wicket, down to gully.

With his second, and bowling quickly enough to dispel any doubts about a shoulder problem, Flintoff induced an inside edge and a drag-on from Langer. Ponting walked out to pantomime boos from the crowd, kicked away some dust before taking guard, and tapped the pitch repeatedly with his bat before being hurried and hit on the pad first ball.

The second he jammed down to a fine gully. The third rapped him on the pad again, hurried again. He walked down the pitch, tapping the turf, to chat to Hayden and take a moment and some sting out of the contest.

The fourth was a no-ball, left alone comfortably. The fifth, the follow-up, was unplayable, a ball that bounced and moved away late, and Ponting, across his stumps in defensive mode, could only edge it to the wicketkeeper.

Flintoff half turned around to Billy Bowden, the umpire, at that point and then stood with his arms outstretched, until he was engulfed by team-mates. A double-wicket maiden and England were on their way. “It was,” Gilchrist wrote, “one of the best overs I’ve seen in any form of cricket.”

Flintoff would take two more wickets in an epic match that went to the wire, but this was the moment he really announced himself as a game-changing cricketer. On his day, and this was very much his day, he could be as quick as Steve Harmison and as skilful as Simon Jones. Ponting, the batsman, had rarely looked as hurried as he did that day.

There were other significant performances from Flintoff to come — a vital first-innings hundred at Trent Bridge and a remarkable 18-over spell at the Oval — but his over to dismiss Langer and Ponting in the second innings at Edgbaston was his defining contribution of the series. It was the point when Australia realised they were up against a colossus whose moment had come.

As Gilchrist wrote: “If you look at Flintoff’s stats for the series they are very good but not amazing...but the statistics don’t tell you about the crucial times he contributed and the impact he made.” When Ponting was dismissed, Gilchrist remembered thinking that Australia were in “big strife”.

It was fitting, then, that the final image of the match - and indeed the defining image of the series - should belong to Flintoff, when he went down on his haunches to shake hands and commiserate with Brett Lee after Australia had fallen short by two agonising runs. It is taken to be an image that shows sport at its very best, two warriors come together in respect and friendship after a ding-dong battle.

In Flintoff’s after-dinner embellishment, which usually brings the house down, it happened rather differently. Seeing Lee distraught, following Kasprowicz’s dismissal to Harmison, Flintoff went down on his haunches, put his left arm on Lee’s shoulder, shook hands, looked his opponent in the eye, and said: “That’s one-all, you Aussie bastard.”

Originally published as Mike Atherton remembers the 2005 Ashes Test at Edgbaston