Drama embraces Test cricket like an old friend as Ben Stokes completes mission impossible

NICK HOWSON AT HEADINGLEY: 1981. Ian Botham. Bob Willis. Your boys took one hell of a beating.

Results are for history books. Drama is for the soul.

The kids can ride their bikes on the road. Can your parents come next weekend? Let's just record 'Escape to the Country’. English cricket has made a mockery of your best-laid plans for 140 years and is showing few signs of letting up.

Day four at Headingley was meant to merely be a precursor to the second half of a gloriously hot Bank Holiday Weekend. Instead, it became the fulcrum, the central pillar and the reason.

As recently as six weeks ago cricket jostled to capture the nation's attention, losing out to an epic Wimbledon final while relegating the British Grand Prix to a mere afterthought.

With no other legitimate distractions the third Test stole the show. This was an event which started without significant jeopardy  - the result had seemingly been confirmed for two days - but grew in enormity as the afternoon progressed.

The level of expectation in Leeds could be gauged against the reaction of the crowd. The day began with 25 dot balls, each one met with a cheer of relief.

Champagne corks were virtually being popped when the runs eventually came. Joe Root's exit provide a brief interlude, but the Western Terrace was back in full voice again as Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow rebuilt, staging a counterattack which betrayed the pressure of the occasion.

Hope sprang eternal when the Australian wheels began to come loose. James Pattinson went for five wides. Edges were landing safe. Vehement appeals failed.

Those incidents supplemented a confused atmosphere; like being at a pantomime while anxiously waiting to be sprayed with water. The relaxing surroundings can't mask the underlining tension.

^{Ben Stokes ended unbeaten on 135}

As it turns out, it isn't the hope that will kill you, but the waiting. The lunch break is a yawning chasm. The 121 England need seems to grow significantly, the six wickets Australia require appear like a skip and a jump.

Like every great show, there is a calamitous moment which humanises everything. Jos Buttler runs a third of the way down the track, is sent back by Stokes, slips, and misses his ground by several meters.

Travis Head completes just the second run-out in this series, in a moment which goes a long way to define Buttler's red-ball summer.

Suddenly we're launched back into cricket's Tardis. Blocked deliveries are welcomed like a free pint, even the most cautiously run single like the antidote to an incurable disease.

England go to within 100 runs of victory and the only legitimate explanation to the reaction is that taxes have been abolished.

But similar to any rollercoaster, anticlimax nearly dominates the finale. Australia make the new ball finally tick and as Nathan Lyon ties up one end, Josh Hazlewood is the chief beneficiary from the rugby stand end.

So much has been written around this Test about the balance between playing enough cricket, the right cricket and too much cricket. Hazlewood has arguably done none of the three and yet he has run in like a Labrador for three straight days. It's a funny old game.

The conventions of the game are like a foreign language to Jofra Archer. Pressure is merely a theory to the West Indian and his two slogs through mid-wicket off Lyon add to that idea. He badly needed a look at the script when he picks out Head on the boundary with one heave too many.

^{Jack Leach survived with Stokes for 76 runs}

Stokes has had a watching brief as Australia's grip on the Ashes seemingly tightened. The clatter of wickets only works to empower him, helping the contest reach a kind of dramatic utopia. There is more character in his right hand than in the main protagonist of a Charles Dickens classic.

The nails are in the coffin, perhaps the nails are the coffin, when we finally get the full Stokes repertoire during an extraordinary passage of play.

The miss-hit slog down the ground, the reverse-hit behind square, the ramp shot eight rows back. He goes to a century with another boundary which barely registers.

Stokes then slips into World Cup hero mode. He's got all the cheat codes. Somehow that is enough for Marcus Harris to drop a slice a third man.

Somehow that is enough for Lyon to miss a run-out, with Jack Leach in a different universe. Perhaps they have shelled the match. Perhaps they have spilt the Ashes.

Australia must surely feel they are due some luck. But it never comes. Stokes is plumb lbw but the trigger-finger of umpire Joel Wilson stays cold.

Tim Paine is now exacerbated. Five balls earlier the final review was frivolously used up. He joins the list of players from the tourists' XI who will have misgivings.

By now the tension has reached a level beyond any available metric.

It leaves the stage open for Stokes, who began the day with his helmet in bits. It is Australian players he leaves in pieces this time around. He carves the most glorious four through cover with an effortlessness which is barely believable.

Headingley has struck again, but maybe even this eclipses it. The Ashes were Australia's. They may never leave Lord's, but symbolically they were on the first flight out of the UK. Stokes rose like a sporting superman to bring them back.

Millions are spent annually on sport science, conditioning and preparation yet no amount of investment can guarentee such theatre and excitement. It is the lifeblood of elite sport.

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