Rarely can umpires have been so tested by a pitch that gave opportunity to the faster bowlers but still never denied a batsman. Bad bowling was driven and cut and flicked through midwicket, good bowling demanded extra special respect due to its constant hint of lateral movement which meant that batsmen needed their sternest application if it was to be resisted.

Because of this Hansie Cronje and Angus Fraser have been top dogs for their respective countries, dragging every ounce of their natural but relatively limited ability on to this most uncompromising stage.

These are not men to fritter away their moment, they are men of substance who, given a sniff of opportunity, will use their remarkable concentration to ensure that it counts for something. Cronje, in his 50th Test match, made 126 and 67 expertly crafted runs; Fraser, in his 42nd Test, bowled 54.5 overs with miserly skill and took 10 wickets for 122 runs.

Their own private two-ball was close to stalemate so it was some other less secure minds around them who initially provided the surprises and then later it was older, tougher adversaries who provided the drama.

Daryll Cullinan, who threatened to whisk the game away from England with his fluent stroke-play, managed to mirror his vague first-innings dismissal by chipping to square leg; Dominic Cork, who wretchedly bowled both sides of the stumps when England needed discipline to capitalise on the three wickets they took quickly on Saturday afternoon, managed to recover his cricketing intelligence in time to finish with four wickets of his own at a decent price.

Cullinan and Cork - volatile and variously gifted, Jekyll and Hydes both, men to make us tear out our hair but at the same time to insist we stay glued to their performance.

Many more have caught our breath during the match: the engaging, ever-effervescent Darren Gough; Mark Boucher, a star in waiting whose momentary lapse when he missed Nasser Hussain should not deflect from his general potential; Mark Butcher, whose star grows daily brighter; the Graeme Hick saga; the Andrew Flintoff tale; Shaun Pollock's unrivalled flair; the trials of Ian Salisbury; the wrongful dismissals of Jonty Rhodes.

But it was the omnipresent, omnipotent Allan Donald, one of the most remarkable cricketers of the age, and the astonishingly strong-willed Atherton, England's most important cricketer of his own time, who squared up to each other for the bout of the day, of the match, of the summer.

They saw so much of each other at the Wanderers a couple of years back that you would think they'd be sick of the sight but yesterday for a compulsive period during the late afternoon the juices ran as never before.

Crack Atherton, crack the lot is South Africa's suspicion so Donald threw the kitchen sink at the former captain of England and the former captain of England thinned his lips and ground his teeth in memorable response.

He stood tall to defend and crouched low to drive past point, he ducked, weaved and swayed and worked the ball off his hip for the singles that allowed him respite.

There is something masochistic about Atherton's resolve against fast bowling and yesterday one felt that he was pushing himself so hard to save the public face of his team. He had long said that these players are not soft - and certainly not Hussain, who accompanied him to the close - but he knew that if he wilted, the Donald of yesterday afternoon may be too much for the new batsmen.

So he did not wilt. Not even when Donald switched to bowl around the wicket and bowled a 90mph'er which flicked his retreating gloves before carrying through low to Boucher. He stood his ground, was given ``in'' and hung on to make his good fortune count.

Now the livid Donald bowled so fast that it shook the crowd 75 yards away and when he forced the edge from Hussain and saw it dropped by Boucher, who was clearly shocked by the pace, he screamed his frustration to the gods. But they weren't listening for they had decreed that this was to be England's day, a day governed by their two strongest characters, Fraser and Atherton, who may just have done enough to upstage the Cronje/Donald alliance which drives South Africa on, and on, so unforgivingly and never, whatever the scoreboard, without hope.