A frenetic match in which 10 wickets fell on the first day and 21 on the second finally came to its senses on Saturday. By the time the second session was an hour old - the scheduled midpoint of the match - it was all over, the game prised from a firm New Zealand grip by their own self-doubts and a heart-warming blend of exuberance and composure from a young man with Test cricket in his blood.
Alex Tudor began the day as the sacrificial nightwatchman from the previous evening and ended it a hero. The top edge from an attempted hook which flew over the head of the wicketkeeper Adam Parore to end the match took his score to 99 not out.
Only twice in international cricket have nightwatchmen gone on to make a century, the most recent 22 years ago. No English nightwatchman has made more.
Tudor might have had, and certainly deserved, a century, although decided it was in the best interests of his team to get the game over and done with. Tudor may get another chance one day, though, for this was no scramble by a lower-order hack but a cultured display of strokeplay from a competent batsman. He had licence to play shots in the way that all-rounders have and frontline batsmen do not, and New Zealand played into his hands.
There was some good fortune, too, as later he became a bit cocky. Once, when 34, he was caught at the wicket off a no ball. Twenty-one boundaries were, however, his reward, an extraordinary proportion, and he faced only 119 balls.
His match total was 131 without being dismissed and the former New Zealand captain Martin Crowe recognised his contribution in a game dominated to a ridiculous degree by the bowlers by making him man of the match.
Should Darren Gough be fit for the second Test at Lord's, however, then the success of Andy Caddick and Alan Mullally means that in all likelihood Tudor will lose his place.
New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming blamed his batsmen, saying that one cannot expect to be 52 for 8, as they were in their second innings, and win. But England, in their first, recovered from 45 for 7.
The real blame lies with New Zealand's bowlers, however, who had performed so beautifully on the second day.
Several factors came into the equation. The weather had changed, the sultry mugginess of Friday which contributed to the ball's aerobatics being replaced by bright, clearer air and a stiffer breeze. The moment England saw the white cumulus clouds making their way across the sky they knew they were in with a sniff of making the 205 still required to win.
But the pitch still had residual moisture held in by a high water table and was showing increasingly erratic bounce and remained receptive to seam.
Had the New Zealand bowlers shown the discipline and patience of the first England innings then the odds were that they still might have won. But where England had bowled too short on the first day only to rectify the error on the second, New Zealand did the reverse.
