You still have to take advantage of your good fortune, though, and that is what England have done. After getting out of jail in Centurion, they turned the tables on South Africa in Durban, and deserved to have a few well-earned drinks on Wednesday night. Getting 20 wickets on that pitch was a marvellous achievement, so congratulations to everyone.

England have just won a Test out of nothing, when no one expected it.

Now they must guard against the sucker punch in Cape Town. Football teams are always most vulnerable immediately after they have scored, when the euphoria is still surging through their veins. The same dynamics apply to cricket.

The challenge on Sunday morning, especially if England are batting, is to maintain their performance level. The adrenalin will be flowing, especially as Cape Town is likely to feel like a home match, with up to 10,000 England supporters expected at Newlands. Strauss and company must not get carried away, because you can’t win the match on the first day but you can sure as hell lose it.

England had a good year in 2009, Graeme Swann an exceptional one. He is an old-fashioned off-spinner who relies on old-fashioned virtues: he flights the ball intelligently, varies his pace, and turns the ball one way. He doesn’t bend his arm and throw the doosra like so many modern off-spinners (Every cricketer knows that you can’t bowl the doosra without flexing your arm).

Swann’s second year of international cricket, which starts at Cape Town, will be an even bigger test. Twelve months ago, he was a surprise package, but teams around the world will have been following his progress on television. Remember that Monty Panesar did well for England initially, but he faded once opposition teams worked out how predictable he was.

Swann is a more intelligent bowler, which should give us hope that he can stay ahead of the competition. It is crucial that he doesn’t go off the boil, or let success go to his head, because he is a huge factor in the success of this team, and will have a major role to play in the Ashes next winter.

The other man at the heart of England’s future is Stuart Broad. He showed at Durban, as he did against the Aussies at the Oval, that he can be explosive when he pitches the ball up. But the word I am hearing is that the England management and coaching staff have encouraged him to bowl short, hoping that he can fill the void left by Andrew Flintoff.

The fact is that Broad will never be an out-and-out fast man. Every bowler has his natural pace, and in his case it is a lively fast-medium. There is nothing wrong with the occasional bouncer, just to keep the batsman honest.

But he is at his best when he is bowling at the stumps, as he did in Durban. Asking him to bang it in short is a waste, because he has a natural flair for wicket-taking, far more than Flintoff ever had. Yes, Flintoff could scare the hell out of people but he struggled to bring them forward and take the edge.

In the second Test, Broad’s wickets came when he landed it in no-man’s land, and the South Africans didn’t know whether to stick or twist.

Just look at JP Duminy, dithering over whether to play the ball or not. It just shows what pressure can do, even to the best players.

Well as Broad bowled, I would have expected Jacques Kallis to get forward to those nip-backers and play them without too much difficulty. The trouble arose because South Africa were so far behind in the match that their judgment was impaired.

Graeme Smith’s side have got all the problems at the moment. They’re playing Swann poorly, and they are relying on what is effectively a two-man attack. Morne Morkel and Dale Steyn bowled well at Durban but Harris wasn’t his usual containing self; England got after him and he lost his discipline.

As for Makhaya Ntini, he is bowling batsmen in, not out. His pace has declined and he has lost his nip off the pitch. But he is such an iconic figure that South Africa face a difficult decision over what to do with him for Cape Town. I would love to be a fly on the wall during that debate.

Article reproduced with kind permission from the Daily Telegraph

The man under most pressure for Durban – and not for the first time – is Ian Bell. He made a terrible misjudgement in the first innings. We have all left balls that clipped the outside of the off stump – but this one hit the top of middle. It’s obvious that he hadn’t worked out his angles for when Paul Harris came from wide of the crease. In the second innings, he nicked quick ball from Friedel de Wet, pitching on a good length and line. But you would expect an international batsman to keep those out.

When Bell is playing well he looks magnificent. He moves beautifully on to both front and back foot, and he has lovely timing. But he just makes too many mistakes. I would expect the selectors to give him another go at Durban, but if he keeps failing, they will lose patience. If one of your top six is not delivering any runs, you might as well play another bowler.

England are great fun to watch from the sidelines, but I feel for Andy Flower and his nerves. At times, they are too exciting for their own good. Just take Sunday: England were saving the match comfortably through Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen. While Trott was playing defensively, and just picking off the odd bad ball, Pietersen was in complete control. He looked what he is – a class act.

This pair had all but saved the match. They needed to bat only another 10 overs but then Pietersen went and ran himself out trying to pinch the bowling. I used to be a pincher too, but at least I could count: Pietersen took his kamikaze run off the fifth ball of the over! It was quite unnecessary, the sort of brainstorm that people always feel he is liable to have.

You might say that England got away with it in the end, but it was a close-run thing. Even with just a few balls to go, they were doing their best to invite South Africa in. In the penultimate over, when Graham Onions bunted one and they went through for a run, I couldn’t help shouting “No, get back you idiots!” The end result was that Paul Collingwood faced two of the last eight balls, and Onions the other six.

South Africa’s advantage at Centurion owed less to any obvious superiority in firepower than to the fact that England kept on handing them freebies. It started when Andrew Strauss won the toss and asked South Africa to bat. Some people have blamed the bowlers for the fact that they took only two wickets on that morning, but the truth is that the ball didn’t do enough to warrant giving South Africa first use of the pitch.

Strauss had probably been keeping an eye on the playing surface for the three days leading up to the match. There were showers around, which kept the covers going on and off, and the groundsman had left plenty of grass until the final cut on the first morning. I think Strauss got sucked in by what he had seen a few days before. It’s dangerous to be looking at pitches too early.

The fact that England got away with a draw, despite all their mistakes, owed something to South Africa’s half-strength attack. The home side missed Steyn, and a fully-fit Jacques Kallis. As for their most experienced player, Makhaya Ntini, he is not the force he used to be. He was outbowled by De Wet. Sport is harsh – you have to pick on ability and can’t be ruled by emotion. There is no shame in admitting that time is catching up with you.

Ntini has been a fantastic standard-bearer. He has opened up the game to millions of black cricketers with his talent, determination and infectious energy. He has become an iconic figure, and the first successful black cricketer in South Africa.

Until apartheid was dismantled, cricket was a whites-only game. He has fired the imagination and ambition of millions of his countrymen who now want to play cricket. That is his legacy far more than the number of wickets he has taken.

Article reproduced with kind permission from the Daily Telegraph