After three days of virtually incessant, torrential rain, the skies cleared here yesterday morning, the sun came out, and the mopping-up began for Sunday's third Test.

Such has been the effect of the weather and an unusually high water table that the "Supersoppa" imported by the Gauteng Cricket Association from Australia last year, and capable of shifting 7,000 gallons of surface water an hour, has been hauled down on loan to Kingsmead. With three days to go before the game, the ground authority is confident that everything will be ready in time.

However, there has not been much chance of practice for the England team. Nets were out of the question, as was fielding practice, and the indoor school was too slippery for anything other than throwdowns for the batsmen. Allan Mullally, though, underwent a fitness test of a sort by bowling for 15 minutes in the Kingsmead car park, but that scarcely constitutes preparation for a Test after a month off.

Even at this stage, there will have been a strategical rethink on both sides. Thus far, South African selection has been bizarre, with spinner Paul Adams playing at The Wanderers instead of another seamer, and not getting a game in Port Elizabeth when they needed him.

England, for their part, have got that bit right, with Phil Tufnell coming in and bowling superbly in the drawn second Test. All things being equal then, the plans for both sides would have been to involve a spinner in their attack on a pitch that has promised to be bouncier than the dead horror England encountered here a fortnight ago against KwaZulu-Natal, but not so green as to create an imbalance between ball and bat.

Now, though, that might have to change, with the pitch left under covers for days, unable to dry properly. Doom mongers are predicting another Wanderers bog, although that is a bit premature.

The return of Jacques Kallis to his all-rounder role makes it easier for South Africa to include Adams, but leaving out Nantie Hayward, their best bowler from Port Elizabeth, would be a tough thing to do.

Tufnell, though, might well find himself on the sidelines, which would be a pity because his performance at St George's Park was mesmerising at times, as well as he or any other spinner has bowled for England for years.

There were those who thought that the intelligent variations, the cunning changes of pace, flight and line, were beyond Tufnell. This, after all, was the fellow who at one time bowled in the Caribbean - on pitches that turned, mark you - with wicketkeeper Jack Russell already stationed legside and peering from behind the batsman. That was the depths to which English spin, or lack of it, had sunk.

But transformation there has been. It helped that, for no apparent reason, the ball turned and bounced on the first day when Tufnell had removed the dangerous Daryll Cullinan and the South African captain Hansie Cronje, a renowned expert against spin, with cerebral bowling. Yet here was Tufnell giving the ball air instead of skidding it through - a good 10 per cent slower than has been the case - getting it above the eyeline, dragging good players not just down the pitch but across as well with changes of line.

Part of the reason must be the influence of the captain and coach, for both would recognise that outwardly that there is a maverick who needs to be kept in check, but that it camouflages insecurity and lack of confidence. Hussain openly demonstrates his confidence in players he trusts. There has been a bit of technical work as well involving his shoulder action, to stop him getting ahead of himself when he releases the ball.

Mostly, though, it comes from the player himself, and he is not certain why or how he made the change. "I don't think I set out to bowl in a particular way at the start of a game," he says. "It didn't seem like I was bowling slower, but sometimes if your body action is quicker the ball comes out slower and you get a bit of dip and action on it. "But generally I try to get the right pace for the pitch and the situation. You've got to adapt, look at strengths and weaknesses, the state of the game and what the captain says. "On the first day in Port Elizabeth, I was looking to do my stuff a bit, thinking, `Okay, here we are, a spinner on the first day, I don't want to be too expensive', perhaps thinking of a bit of a holding role to give the seamers a break. "But then the odd one turned, I don't know why, and suddenly I'm thinking, `Hold on, I can do some damage here'. The ball came out well, I got a good rhythm, bowled a good line and length and played just a bit high but wider."

The batsman, down the pitch, was beaten by the flight and stumped by yards as the ball spun past his outside edge. Tufnell's celebrations were ecstatic: it was, at that stage, a big, big wicket.

"First ball of a spell, I'd be thinking good length and line, get off to a good start, nothing short or halfvolleyish. But to be honest with you, he'd had a couple of little runs down at me in the first spell and not quite got there, and I just had a funny feeling he might try it first ball to try to make an impression, take the upper hand.

"So I thought, `Okay, I'll toss this one up a little bit, make sure it's up there, and give it a bit more width and see what he does'. We'd talked a bit about slipping the odd one in wider so that the batter has to move his head. Anyway he came and ran past it. It was just intuition. Yeah, I enjoyed that too."