If all Test matches were like this, one-day cricket would be no more. This was a thriller in which 22 men played their part – 24 if you count some of the bizarre decisions from umpires de Silva and Bowden – but six stood out. Only one of them was a New Zealander, but in a breathless final hour he rewrote the record books and forced the hacks to rewrite their copy. Nathan Astle's 222 wasn't so much double Nelson as double take: every time he launched another sweetly-struck six into the stratosphere, you had to rub your eyes to make sure you weren't dreaming.

Astle had already taken part in one incredible tenth-wicket stand to deny England, when he and Danny Morrison survived almost two sessions to claim a draw in the first Test at Auckland five years ago. But this time he was on the attack.

His second century, which came off 39 balls and contained nine sixes – none of them out-and-out slogs – ranked with Gilbert Jessop, Viv Richards, Ian Botham and Shahid Afridi for sheer brutality. When England pitched it up, he drove; when they dropped short, he hooked. If Don Bradman's batting was a mixture of poetry and murder, as the English cricket journalist Raymond Robertson-Glasgow once wrote, then for a brief hour Astle was Shakespeare and Jack the Ripper rolled into one.

It was somehow typical of a crazy game that by far the quickest double-century in 125 years of Test cricket wasn't enough for victory (and it wasn't even enough for the Man of the Match award, which went to another double-centurion, Graham Thorpe). Every time you expected something to happen in the match, the opposite did. England were 0 for 2 but weren't skittled. New Zealand were 50 for 1, but were. England were 106 for 5, but declared on 468 for 6. New Zealand were 333 for 9 and still made a good fist of chasing 550. Glorious uncertainty has never been more glorious or uncertain than this.

The pace of the match was remarkable too. On the first two days of the match, when the ball swung and seamed, 438 runs were scored at a rate of 1.76 an over. On the last two, when the pitch flattened out, 856 runs were scored at 4.90. In other words, the third and fourth days were almost three times as frenetic as the first and second. Slow, slow, quick, quicker, and yet each day with dramas of its own.

England's five heroes were heroic because they adapted brilliantly to the circumstances. Nasser Hussain reminded us what a good bad-wicket player he is, and his 106 would have been worth twice as much later in the game. Matthew Hoggard found swing that eluded everyone else. Graham Thorpe should have been caught second ball but counterattacked to perfection. Andrew Flintoff put an excruciating run of scores and no-scores to the back of his mind and batted with balance and poise just when England needed him most. And today Andy Caddick extracted juice out of a pitch that seemed bone dry.

In the first innings Caddick clung onto Hoggard's coat-tails to take three wickets in an over after Hoggard had taken the first five. But today he made all the running himself, picking up five of the first six wickets to fall.

And in the absence of Darren Gough, he even managed to do what Gough did during the one-day series, which was return to the attack and break a partnership. He got rid of Mark Richardson with the fourth ball of one spell when the score was 119 for 2; and he caught and bowled Craig McMillan with the first ball of another at 242 for 4. As Hussain would say, he put his hand up.

A scoreline of 1-0 doesn't quite do this game justice, but it sets the series up perfectly. If the next two games are even half as good as this, we're in for quite a treat.

Lawrence Booth is assistant editor of Wisden.com.

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