I cannot get Mike Atherton's century out of my head: the century he never scored, the century he allowed Alec Stewart to steal from him, the century he gave away.

Atherton, by his insistence that only victory mattered, was making an immensely important statement about what it means to play a team game successfully.

When he was captain, no one ever doubted his commitment to the cause and his willingness always to put the team first. Exactly the same goes for Alec Stewart now.

The same cannot be said for all their team-mates. When Mark Ramprakash was given out at Lord's, he reportedly said to umpire Hair: "You're messing with my career, Darrell." Not, you will note, "You're messing with our chances of winning, Darrell." Can we yet be certain that Graeme Hick, who seethed for so long about Atherton's declaration at Sydney when he was on 98, would now have different priorities?

It is, of course, easier for Atherton than for the likes of Ramprakash. He is sure of his place in the team. He is, like John Major, proving far more popular and successful in the role of leader emeritus than he was when he was actually in charge. Ramprakash is still trying to fight his way up the greasy pole. But cricketers everywhere could learn a lot from Atherton.

Should he have walked when he was given not out on Sunday? Don't be so soft. This was a red-blooded modern Test match. Batsmen used to walk in Test cricket and were much praised by schoolmasters and other distant moralisers.

Their fellow-players were aware that chaps who would walk quite cheerily when they got an undiscovered nick on 142 thus built up a reputation for sportsmanship. This stood them in very good stead if they held their ground in more trying circumstances.

Cricketers are obliged to accept the umpire's decision without visible or audible complaint, which is hard enough in a contest as tense as this; they are not obliged to do his job for him.

But the fact that such arguments are taking place is a tribute to the power of Test cricket: the way it contains myriad individual battles inside the context of a larger war, governed by a code of honour creakier than the Geneva Convention.

A Test such as this produces theatre that may never match football for mass appeal but will last as long as people with imagination and intelligence love games.

And, on the subject of theatre, I have not seen a face like the one Donald pulled when Boucher dropped Hussain since the Ugly Sisters discovered that the slipper fitted Cinderella at Northampton Rep.

Trent Bridge was a great game. This does not mean English cricket's crisis is over. I have always believed the problems were both shallower and deeper than most analysts would have us believe.

They are shallow because a win like this can have an astonishing short-term galvanising effect. And the emergence of just one new star - and Andy Flintoff has pole position now to prove he is the man can make an astonishing difference. Ian Botham (who made his debut in England's last big win at Trent Bridge 21 years ago) engineered cricket's boom in the 1980s single-handed.

They are deep because the game has failed very badly to communicate with the younger generation. At the Cheltenham festival this year I reckon the average age of the autograph hunters was about 40.

Paragraphs like the above one are now liable to produce lengthy letters from the ECB's new rapid-rebuttal unit: Richard Peel, the director of corporate affairs, is used to explaining the incomprehensible.

The trouble is that no one records how many kids play for fun - against lamp-posts, in their gardens, on the beaches or on the diminishing numbers of open spaces. The strong impression is that at this crucial level cricket, once supreme all summer, is being hammered by soccer. If the Trent Bridge Test can change that even a fraction, it really will have achieved something.