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England may be about to discover that segue seems to be the hardest word | Rob Smyth

The break-up of the great Australia and West Indies sides shows England's transition in the forthcoming years will be tough

One of the many joys of an Australian tour is the distinct identities of the five major grounds. Adelaide is woozy and high-scoring, although the assumption of a draw is dangerous: there have been only four in the last 20 Tests there. And England's last two visits have been almost definitive. Andy Flower described their performance three years ago as "perfect", with an innings victory sparking a nine-month period in which they marmalised all-comers. The traumatic last-day defeat in 2006-07, by contrast, was the end of the 2005 side, killed off by Shane Warne's psychological trickery. "It changed the lives and careers of quite a few people," said Duncan Fletcher, "especially me."

Whatever happens in this Test, it may be the beginning of the end of one of England's finest teams. The sad absence of Jonathan Trott was a harsh reminder of the imminent need to reshape an ageing team. Nobody really knows whether Trott will play for England again; even if he does, the point stands. It is often treated as a surprise how infrequently great XIs play together – the 2005 Ashes side, for example, only ever played four Tests together – even though the nature of life and sport shows it to be logical. But great cores do consistently play together. England's success has been built around a group of nine players: Andrew Strauss has gone, and of the rest, Trott, Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell, Matt Prior, Graeme Swann and Jimmy Anderson are in their 30s.

Sport's capacity to replenish the well is endlessly fascinating, but it should never be taken for granted. England have not even replaced Paul Collingwood, who retired three years ago, never mind Strauss. Soon they will have to replace almost an entire team. The problem with a golden generation is that one day it turns into base metal. The transition from one very good or great team to the next is arguably the single toughest task for a coach. And that is before you consider that England might also be undergoing the transition from one coach to the next should Flower decide his work his done.

The awkwardness of that transition is compounded by the unusually bare fixture list. In the 15 months after the Ashes England will play only seven Tests, their quietest period since the India tour of 1988-89 was cancelled. This is because all roads lead to the World Cup next winter. Between the end of the Ashes and the end of that tournament, Test matches will account for a maximum of 13% of England's matches. Between November 2012 and January 2014 that figure is 38%.

There is another reason why the transition will be so awkward. England will, in a sense, be punished for their admirable selectorial approach, easily the most consistent since British society discovered impatience a couple of generations ago. This means that few players have been exposed to Test cricket.

Only South Africa have used fewer players this decade, and they have played 33 Tests to England's 48. Many of England's squad members are also in their 30s – Michael Carberry, Monty Panesar, Chris Tremlett – and others have not really impressed.

A couple of years ago there was a quiet contentment that England's future was safe but undoubted talents such as Eoin Morgan, James Taylor, Jonny Bairstow and, most worrying of all given his insane potential, Steven Finn, have not cracked Test cricket. Of the next generation, Joe Root is probably the only person on whom you would stake your rent, never mind your mortgage.

It is fun to look back at predicted teams for the future, which ostensibly make the writer look ridiculous but in fact simply serve to show sport's joyous and sometimes tragic unpredictability. If we predicted an England Test XI for 2018 now, it would look hilarious by 2025. Had we, in the summer of 2001, suggested an England team for the 2005 Ashes, it might have been: Marcus Trescothick, Vikram Solanki, Michael Vaughan, Nasser Hussain, Usman Afzaal, Ben Hollioake, James Foster, Alex Tudor, Chris Schofield, Steve Harmison and Matthew Hoggard.

The struggle to build on success is nothing new, particularly in modern English sport. Since the 2003 Rugby World Cup, England have won only one Six Nations, and the football team followed the wonder of Italia 90 by failing to reach the next World Cup finals. The 2005 Ashes side were gone in a flash, though they were hit by an unusual number of injury problems.

It has affected greater teams than England. Australia entered a prolonged funk after the break-up of their great sides of the late 70s and early 80s, and particularly the late 90s and early 2000s. They lost Damien Martyn, Shane Warne, Justin Langer, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist, Brett Lee and Matthew Hayden in the space of 25 months between 2006 and 2009 and have not yet fully recovered. Alastair Cook, like Ricky Ponting before him, could be left holding the baby.

There are lessons to be learned from other sports. The ideal is to make the changes slowly – one at a time, as Bob Paisley's Liverpool did in their glory years – but that is very difficult, particularly as the South Africa tour of 2015–16 is a natural final goal and end-point. Pietersen has already put in an unofficial request for that retirement date, saying two weeks ago that "If the old man can survive until then, I'd like to get there". Bell, Prior and potentially Trott could play beyond that, but it is hard to see Pietersen, Swann and Anderson doing so.

It is theoretically possible to enforce that staggered departure by moving players on a year or two before their expiry date, something Arsène Wenger did very well at Arsenal for a time, but this is fraught with problems. An ageing team is invariably on the way down, finding wins harder to come by than was once the case, and therefore the idea of bringing in an inferior player for medium-term gain takes significant courage.

There is also, inevitably, the issue of sentiment. You are messing with a man's career, a man's life, and when you have shared so many successes with certain players, humanity is inevitably a factor. Sir Alex Ferguson was peerless at dispassionately dispatching players; others might not find it so easy. It is a desperately hard thing to manage, which sometimes comes down to little more than luck with the age spread of the players involved.

Sometimes even staggering the departures does not help, as West Indies found with their desperate, slow death throughout the 90s. Successful transitions are possible: West Germany moved from one truly great team in the 70s to another in 1990 via a very good, almost forgotten team who won Euro 80 and reached two World Cup finals. Only West Germany could have a forgotten generation with such achievements. But they are an exception. Never mind Mitchell Johnson's brain-scrambling pace. England have a far greater problem awaiting them: transition. In sport, segue seems to be the hardest word.

England cricket teamAshes 2013-14CricketThe AshesRob Smyth
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Crystal Palace v West Ham United – as it happened

Marouane Chamakh's header gave Palace a vital, hard-earned victory which took them off the bottom of the table

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The Joy of Six: red mist in football | Scott Murray and Rob Smyth

From Frank Rijkaard's spat with Rudi Völler to Mark Hughes going for the ball, footballers losing the plot in the comedy style

1) Frank Rijkaard v Rudi Völler, June 1990

Long before Cheryl, Posh and Scott Carson's girlfriend tore it up in Baden-Baden, Wags were having an impact upon the World Cup. Frank Arnesen's sending-off, which contributed to Denmark's sad exit from Mexico 86 , was the consequence of serious concern for his wife's health (this vicious tackle, after a breathtaking piece of skill, didn't put him in the best of moods either, but we digress). And four years later Frank Rijkaard's infamous contretemps with Rudi Völler was apparently sparked because of the breakdown of his marriage just before the tournament.

There have been 159 red cards in the World Cup but it is hard to believe that anyone has misplaced the plot to this extent. Let's recap. Rijkaard scythed down Völler and sniggered like a naughty schoolboy when he was booked. He then defiled Völler's mullet with spittle – very few people noticed at the time, although the BBC's Tony Gubba did – as he ran past. From the resulting free-kick, after Völler pulled out of a tackle with Hans van Breukelen and fell over, Rikjaard lumbered over and shaped to lift Völler by the ear. At this stage Rijkaard was still only on a yellow card, and might have got away with the whole thing, but the context of a World Cup knockout game against Holland's fiercest rivals (in a World Cup qualifier a year earlier, a banner had jauntily compared Lothar Matthäus to Adolf Hitler) was secondary to the urgent need to flob at Völler a second time.

As Völler was stumbling to his feet, about to receive the most unjust punishment in the history of mankind, Rijkaard furiously horked every last particle of phlegm from the deepest recesses of his sinuses, attempting to set an unofficial world record for mucus thickness. It's an astonishing sight . Then, when both men were sent off, Rijkaard finished the job, nonchalantly gobbing into Völler's hair like a jogger aiming at a lamppost, and breezily fled the scene faster than you could say "noggin's gone". Völler stood still, the personification of affronted confusion. He might well have thought the whole thing was some elaborate Truman Show-style wind-up, but he took his red card with staggering dignity. If anyone was entitled to some red mist it was Völler.

On the BBC highlights programme that night, Ray Wilkins thought of the children. "Young kids, y'know … please, parents, turn the videos off now because that is just absolutely scandalous." It was even more unfathomable because Rijkaard was usually such a, well, phlegmatic character; a gentle soul and a good man.

He apologised to Völler a few months later and in 1996 the pair adorned cream dressing gowns and shared breakfast in an advert for a butter company. "The fee was donated by both of us to charity, otherwise I wouldn't have joined in," Völler said in this interview. His enduring beef is not so much with Rijkaard but the referee, Juan Carlos Loustau. "I still can't understand why the ref sent me off, and I guess he will take it to his grave." So will Völler and Rijkaard, whose brilliant careers were arguably defined by that one moment of weirdness. RS

2) Tommy Gemmell v Helmut Haller, October 1969

Here's one of the all-time classics, a piece of film that could only be bettered were it set to a Flintstones soundtrack. Yes, it's Scotland's Tommy Gemmell toe-punting West Germany's Helmut Haller up the fundament in a 1969 World Cup qualifier.

Haller had sent Reinhard Libuda clear to score the decisive goal in a 3-2 win in Hamburg on 79 minutes, but it was not the midfielder's last act of the match. With time running out and the Scots desperate to at least equalise, Gemmell cut inside from the left only to have his leg cynically swiped by Haller. [FX: Barney Rubble's Big Head Take] There's the briefest of pauses as the mist descends on Gemmell. As the Scot turns in the determined fashion, Haller suddenly realises what he's done, and attempts to exit the scene in one piece. [FX: Fred Flintstone Scrambling] No such luck, son. Ooyah! Oof! [FX: Fred Drops The Ball].

But it wasn't all cartoon capers. Gemmell's club manager, Jock Stein, had been in the stands watching, and sat on the plane home in a low seethe. He dropped Gemmell for the following weekend's League Cup final against St Johnstone, Davie Hay taking his place and his winners' medal. Gemmell put in a transfer request, and though the Lisbon Lion would remain at Celtic for two more years, scoring in the 1970 European Cup final just as he had done in 1967, his relationship with Stein would never recover and he eventually left for Nottingham Forest. "If it hadn't been for Haller," reminisced Gemmell after the German's death last year, "there is every chance I would never have left Celtic. Although I wanted to kick him over the stand that night, I am sad at his passing." SM

3) Gary Bennett v David Speedie, January 1990

Gary Bennett is a Sunderland legend for a number of reasons: 11 years of languid defensive excellence, 440-odd games, one famous goal. But mainly for his services to fan/player interaction via the medium of David Speedie's throat.

Speedie was a footballer who loved to be hated. He spent his career winding up opponents and fans for – and with – kicks, sometimes obscuring a considerable talent in the process. "Speedie is a prick," says one comment on an alternative YouTube video of this incident. "I would know. He's my uncle."

His relationship with Bennett began after the first leg of the 1985 League Cup semi-final between Sunderland and Chelsea, when Bennett and Howard Gayle had a zealous exchange of views with Speedie's father in the players' lounge at Roker Park. Five years later, Sunderland met Speedie's Coventry in the quarter-finals of the same competition. Bennett had a bad knee and probably shouldn't have been playing, and as centre-half and centre-forward he and Speedie exchanged the usual unpleasantries in the course of their work.

Matters came to a head when a loose ball broke towards the touchline. Speedie went miles over the top of the ball, leaving a snide one on Bennett's bad knee. As his momentum took him towards the Sunderland fans in the Clock Stand – no fencing in those days, remember – Speedie tilted his head theatrically to the side and stood statuesque while staring into the middle distance. He was a picture of misplaced pride, with the self-satisfied pose of somebody who thinks he's won hands down – oblivious to the fact that, behind him, a hand was going up, the chickens not so much coming home to roost as to whip off his wattle. Bennett's tensed, open hand homed inexorably in on Speedie's neck, like a scene in a horror movie where the audience can see what's coming but the protagonist has no idea.

Bennett, for a split-second consumed with a hate supreme, was intent on some vigilante justice: he eased Speedie over the advertising hoardings into a disappointingly benevolent crowd. The ITV commentator John Helm, used to a culture in which ABH usually only merited a stern talking-to, said the referee "will have very strong words with the Sunderland captain about this". In fact he sent both Bennett and Speedie off.

"To be honest I just saw red," said Bennett in this interview. "Goodness knows what might have happened if the officials hadn't pulled me away. In fact at one point he ended up in the crowd but they just kept pushing him back. When supporters ask me about David Speedie I always tell them: 'It's your fault, you lot could have sorted him out once and for all that night!'" RS

4) Mark Hughes v David Tuttle, January 1994

There is a superbly perceptive section in Paul McGrath's autobiography in which he describes the unspoken dance between centre-half and centre-forward as they battle for supremacy, the balance of power changing almost imperceptibly throughout a match. It applied more in McGrath's time, when teams played two up and each centre-back took a man. Theirs was a unique relationship, not least because they were in constant competition yet scarcely ever in a position to stare awkwardly at each others' eyebrows, never mind the whites of their eyes. There were so many ways you might exert superiority. Strength, skill, subtlety, sleight of foot or sleight of hip, all geared towards the decisive breaking of your opponent's will.

Or you could just boot him unfairly and squarely in the trousers.

All the YouTube videos of Mark Hughes, all those furious finishes, remind us how big a sweet spot existed on his right boot. It was not as big as the tender spot between David Tuttle's legs, upon which Hughes homed with rare decisiveness after miscontrolling a ball over the top from Denis Irwin. "When I viewed the game on video late that night I couldn't believe what I was seeing," said Sir Alex Ferguson in Managing My Life. "Hughes had almost dislodged Tuttle's testicles."

The beautiful thing about this is its almost entire pointlessness: with two minutes to go the game was pretty much safe, thanks to a quite glorious goal from Hughes – "If we've got any chance in international football, this has to be the way to score goals," plus-ça-changed the co-commentator Trevor Brooking – and Tuttle had done little beyond exhibiting the usual assertions of masculinity written into a centre-half's contract in the early 1990s. There was a bad, unpunished foul on Hughes 16 minutes earlier but that was par for the course.

No matter. As the ball drifted towards the corner flag, Hughes suddenly contracted an almost lethal dose of the battle fever. In the future words of his team-mate Roy Keane, he stuck it up Tuttle's bollocks. And then had the gall to complain, as did Ryan Giggs, who stopped just short of pleading that Hughes had got the ball. In those days, it was only a second yellow card. Tuttle probably had a couple of yellows as well. RS

5) Roy Keane v Alan Shearer, September 2001

Keane is mainly remembered these days – this is purely in the context of transgressing football's laws, he achieved one or two other things in the game after all – for his cold-blooded assassination of the Manchester City midfielder Alf Inge Haaland in 2001. A modern take on Big Jack Charlton's Little Black Book, Keane had made a mental note of Haaland who, four years earlier and then at Leeds, sneered over him as he rolled around in pain with a snapped cruciate ligament. "Bryan Robson had told me to take my time," Keane later recalled. "'You'll get your chance, Roy. Wait.'"

Wait he did. And the calm and calculating nature of the eventual payback – "Alfie was taking the piss. I'd waited long enough. I fucking hit him hard. The ball was there (I think). Take that, you cunt" – is usually the first point of reference when it comes to Keane and the darker arts these days. But it rather obscures the fact that the whole episode was set off after Haaland had piqued Keane in that fateful 1997 brouhaha with a masterclass in niggly fouls, to the extent that the Manchester United man knacked himself while attempting a retaliation. ("I was trying to trip him up rather than kick him," explained Keane. "I knew it would probably mean a booking, but fuck it.") The 2001 Haaland hit was an aberration; the majority of Keane's mistakes were made while out of control on a rolling boil, his brain very much melting in a bain-marie of belligerence.

Keane has contributed quite a few classics to the canon, from tap-dancing on Gareth Southgate's titties in the 1995 FA Cup semi-final to losing a battle of minds with Alan Shearer at Newcastle in 2002. ("Shearer stops me taking the throw in," begins his account in the Eamon Dunphy-ghosted Keane. "He's taking the piss. I lose it, throw the fucking ball at him. 'You prick,' he sneers. The way he says it, I know he really means it. I go for him, try to grab him by the throat. He's grinning. 'You prick,' he gestures dismissively. The red card comes out. Shearer's right. I am a prick. Fell into the trap.")

But here's one that's oft-forgotten these days. It's October 1995, and Eric Cantona is four games back after the eight-month absence enforced for his kung-fu clean-out of that clown at Crystal Palace. United are hosting Middlesbrough, and on 18 minutes Nigel Pearson makes a two-footed lunge at Cantona, no doubt a warm and witty homage to the French striker's Selhurst Park shenanigans. Cantona bats not an eyelid. "Since returning," reported David Lacey in this paper, "Cantona has yet to give an opponent a dirty look."

However, Keane had clearly decided to take up Eric's slack. Running the length of the pitch to instigate a Hegelian dialectic with Middlesbrough's players and the referee, and having then offered a trenchant antithesis to Pearson's thesis, he became frustrated at the lack of a third way. Which may explain why he "followed this up with a wild hack at a passing opponent", then 12 minutes later responded to Jan Aage Fjortoft tugging at his shirt by extending his right arm and attempting to push the Boro striker's face through. Off you go!

The game was scoreless at the time, but the ten men of United went on to win 2-0. It was Keane's third sending off in a United shirt - he had walked for the aforementioned Southgate incident and then for a dive at Blackburn - and each time his team went on to win the game. "Perhaps their handicap should be re-examined," was Lacey's tinder-dry assessment. SM

6) Humberto Maschio v Honorindo Landa, June 1962

The fixture between Chile and Italy in Group Two of the 1962 World Cup should be considered not so much a football match, more the statistical outlier in a centuries' worth of meteorological data, a unique atmospheric convergence of red mist which hovered over Santiago for an unprecedented 90 minutes (plus the eight minutes of first-half stoppage time which accounted for the bobbies coming on mob-handed to drag Georgio Ferrini off).

Picking one particular example of misto rosso from a game that featured several haymakers, a couple of broken noses, one acrobatic hoof in the coupon, a rugby tackle, and the forced removal of a player by several members of the local filth, is a futile affair. Not least because all the set-piece rumbles are so well known, and we'd be arguing all day over which one is the most entertaining. So instead let's pick a moment for the red-mist purist which occurred right at the end of the first half.

The Argentinian-born Italian midfielder Humberto Maschio had already (1) been shoved in the chest and (2) punched in the face, (3) and had punched someone in the face, and (4) raked his studs down a Chilean shin. Italy were down to nine men by this point, although, as the referee Ken Aston hadn't considered Maschio one of the worst offenders, he was free to continue playing. With seconds of the half remaining, he was brought down by Chile's captain, Sergio Navarro. It was a free-kick. Eladio Rojas, jogging slowly back to defend, did what players do and flicked the static ball back upfield a couple of yards into empty space, in an attempt to lessen Italy's advantage. Play hadn't restarted but the referee's whistle in Maschio's head blew loud and clear. He raced back after the ball, but instead of calmly retrieving and replacing it, slid across the turf and hoicked it violently out of play for a "throw". His fuses blown, there he was, doing battle with invisible opponents on the biggest stage of all.

This occurred at the end of a 53-minute half packed with so much ultraviolence that Maschio, a constant presence as both victim and perpetrator, had been propelled by righteous indignation, anger and ear steam into uncharted mental territory. He had found himself rocket-blasting through several layers in the mist-o-sphere with the controls of the funk mothership set for the heart of the sun. Most folk, no matter how annoyed, come back down to earth after a moment or two. Like panic attacks and erections, you can only keep it going for so long. But he'd been at it for nearly an hour. He really was out there. And this is what happens to a man. This is red mist in its most condensed form, a distillation of disintegration, a tantrum tincture.

Luckily, half-time was upon him, during which a damp cloth to the napper could be applied. And by golly it worked, for Maschio was a much more measured gent during the second period. At the final whistle came happy evidence that his mind was working clearly again, and no lasting damage had been done. He offered his hand to Honorino Landa, and as the two shook in the sporting fashion, slyly crunched his other fist on to his opponent's jaw. [FX: Yogi Bear's Noggin Klonk] SM

• The inconsistent spelling of Tommy Gemmell's surname was corrected on Friday 29 November 2013

Rob SmythScott Murray
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The Spin | What is the greatest Test century of all time?

In a special edition of the Spin, here are two extracts from a new book on the 100 greatest Test hundreds (and a chance to win it)

In 136 years of Test cricket there has been 3,649 Test centuries scored by 697 batsmen, from Sir Donald Bradman and Sachin Tendulkar to Ajit Agarkar and Saqlain Mushtaq. Whittling those down to the top 100 is not the easiest task, but that's what Patrick Ferriday has done in his new book Masterly Batting (a copy of which you can win at the bottom of the page).

Ferriday, author of the superb Before The Lights Went Out has spent two years preparing the book with a team of six researchers. This is not just a pub argument in written form: it is mixture of quantitative and qualitative judgements, the product of research so hardcore that the Spin is rather jealous it wasn't involved.

All Test centuries were measured in 10 categories: size, percentage of team score, speed, bowling attack, pitch conditions, chances given, match impact, series impact, compatibility of attack and conditions, intangibles.

Ferriday says the list does not purport to be definitive, but "the combination of detailed research and intelligent application give us a fascinating 100". Having seen the list, the Spin would certainly concur.

Top of the list is an innings with which, says Ferriday, "I can find no flaw".

Each of the 100 innings have their own essay. The Spin should declare an interest here: we wrote the piece on Graeme Smith's granite-willed 154 not out against England at Edgbaston in 2008, an extract of which is below. But don't let that put you off, etc: the list of writers includes David Frith, Stephen Chalke, Derek Pringle (who covers an innings for which he had the best seat in the house at the non-striker's end, Graham Gooch's immense 154 against West Indies in 1991) and the Guardian's own Daniel Harris.

PATRICK FERRIDAY ON BOB BARBER'S 185 AT SYDNEY IN 1965-66

The 1960s – free love, walls torn down and young men and women casting off shackles and burning bras; a decade of vibrant colour. Not in cricket it wasn't. After the false dawn of the tied-Test series of 1960-61, international cricket sank into a 10-year malaise of slow attritional batting where a first day score of 210-3 was regarded as a solid achievement. There were, of course, the brilliant exceptions: Pollock, Sobers and Kanhai and, briefly, Dexter and Milburn but this was the age of the run-digger Bill Lawry and his acolytes.

Bob Barber played another game. As a young amateur he had been shackled by excessive caution but in a reverse of most careers he became more carefree with age and carefree suited him well. His England record had been patchy but by 1964 he had become a regular; an aggressive, some would say impetuous, left-handed opener and useful leg-break bowler although at the start of the series he was still looking for a maiden Test century.

The first two matches sank in a morass of big and slow scores but at Sydney everything changed for five glorious hours. The pitch was good and the attack only moderate but the manner of Barber's batting was breathtaking. "What I really want to do," he had said earlier on the tour, "is to play one innings as I think the game should be played. And I want to play it at Sydney." The lunch score of 93-0 with Barber on 57 was some indication that he was about to fulfil his desires. Only an hour later he moved effortlessly to his century and when, just before tea, his partner Boycott was out for 83 the pair had put on 234. After the break, John Edrich took the Boycott role, nudging and pushing but most of all enjoying the superb entertainment emanating from the other end. For another hour Barber flayed all-comers before succumbing to weariness, being dismissed for 185 scored off 255 balls. This wasn't how it was done on the first day of a Test and he was given a rousing reception by a 40,000-strong home crowd. English batsmen had performed great deeds in Australia but nothing like this on an opening day since George Gunn in 1907.

The plaudits rolled in – John Woodcock called it "one of the truly great displays of batting in Test cricket", Wisden dubbed it "the superlative achievement of the whole tour" and Australian opener Lawry was equally effusive.

Despite a middle-order collapse on day two, England posted a big score and, on a crumbling wicket, dismissed Australia twice for an innings victory. Australia were to level the series with a re-modelled team featuring just two specialist bowlers – the Ashes had reverted to hard-nosed grind.

Frank Tyson described the series as 'most engrossing' but 50 years later it looks mighty dull, with one exception – the shining light of Bob Barber's one and only Test century.

GRAEME SMITH'S 154* AT EDGBASTON IN 2008

Smith's next scoring stroke was the most cathartic of his career. He pulled his old friend Pietersen for four to move to 154 and seal South Africa's first series victory in England since the pre-isolation days of Graeme Pollock and Eddie Barlow. His team charged on to the field to embrace a man who was both peer and hero. Smith faced 246 balls, hitting 17 fours. He had withstood tennis elbow, a bad back, a dodgy sightscreen, the force of Flintoff's personality, the rough outside his off stump, a lack of solids, a 47-over session and 45 years of history. He left pieces of his soul all over the Edgbaston wicket. If great and legend are the most abused words in sport, then epic is not far behind. Even the most pedantic, curmudgeonly patriot in England would concur this was an epic innings. Perhaps the biggest compliment you can pay Smith is that the scale and manner of that innings were not remotely surprising. It is the innings he was born to play.

On a personal level, Smith upgraded the archetypal captain's innings for the 21st century. It had all the over-my-dead-body qualities associated with the genre, but its purpose was victory rather than the avoidance of defeat, and he scored at a 21st-century strike-rate of 63. In some ways this was the completion of an almost Shakespearean character arc. He lost his way after the spectacular start to his captaincy career in England in 2003. He went two-and-a-half years without a Test century between 2005 and 2007 and was often criticised for immaturity or boorishness and embarrassingly misplaced machismo. He did not make the Wisden Almanack list of the world's 40 best players in 2006 and 2007. In 2008, still aged only 27, he matured into the spiritual heir to Steve Waugh he had promised to be on the previous tour of England.

Smith scored 277 at Edgbaston on that tour. This innings trumped it comfortably. It is one of cricket's fascinations that 154 can be greater than 277, 153 greater than 375 and 154 greater than 333. Everybody knew instinctively that this was an innings Smith would never top. Just as you can't put the genie back in the bottle, so you can't put the monkey back on the back.

It is the second-highest innings by a captain in a successful fourth-innings run chase, behind Don Bradman's 173 not out at Headingley in 1948. Captains are supposed to set the tone but Smith knows it's even more important to set the tone in a different sense – to cement the final judgement of a match. He is a rough-track bully, addicted to tough runs.

The opportunity to play this kind of innings is what gets Smith going, and he is the only man in history to score 1,000 Test runs in successful fourth-innings chases. That includes four centuries. Only one other captain – Ricky Ponting – has managed even two. Smith is arguably cricket's greatest triumph of substance over style, a man who can will his way to Test hundreds. And, while this was one of his better-looking innings – there was plenty going on in the V – it is remembered for its significance rather than its aesthetics.

Smith bent a match, a series and even history to his granite will. Thereafter South Africa's series in England would be discussed in entirely different terms. Instead of wondering if South Africa would ever win, focus turned to whether Smith would see off another England captain. Michael Vaughan resigned the day after Smith's 154, following Nasser Hussain's decision to quit in 2003. And four years later, Smith's team prompted the retirement of Andrew Strauss as well.

It is easy to forget, in view of England's lost years under Peter Moores, just how much victory meant, both to South Africa in 2008 and India a year earlier. Smith described it as the "first massive stepping stone" of a team who went on to become irrefutably the world's best. In some ways it was also their final frontier, not because of what they achieved so much as what they had been through to achieve it. South Africa won in Australia for the first time later that year, a far greater feat but one that, following heavy beatings in 2001-02 and 2005-06, came out of nowhere rather than at the end of a long journey. The win in England was not just for his current team-mates: it was for Hansie Cronje, Kepler Wessels, Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock, Gary Kirsten and the others who had been denied in 1994, 1998 and 2003.

After the match Smith returned to the dressing room to drink with his team-mates. "Jeez it was a really special feeling." For a consummate team man, these are the moments that take up a lease in the memory bank. Amid the dressing-room celebrations, McKenzie and Boucher made Smith "down a beer or two in a compromised position for having die groot balles to bat through to the end". The team eventually went back to the Radisson Hotel to continue their celebrations. At around 11pm, Smith realised he had not eaten all day, and slipped out to eat alone at a Lebanese cafe near the hotel. He says that, as he sat fiddling with a plastic knife and fork and a paper plate, the scale of the achievement sank in for the first time.

The team shambled to bed in the small hours. The following morning Smith was ripped from his sleep – not by nerves this time but by a fire alarm, which kept the players out on the street for 45 minutes. His back and his elbow hurt; he had a pulsating hangover. Graeme Smith awoke feeling dreadful. It was the most beautiful pain of his life.

• These are extracts from Masterly Batting, which is published by Von Krumm Publishing. The Spin has three copies to give away. To stand a chance of winning, answer the following question: which Kevin Pietersen century is included in the top 25 in the book? Send your answers to smyth_rob@hotmail.com by 10am on Monday 28 October.

• This is an extract from the Spin, the Guardian's free weekly cricket email. To sign up, click here.

CricketRob Smyth
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The Ashes podcast: Australia collapse as England win series

It was another so-so performance from England, but an even worse one from Australia, and on this edition of The Ashes podcast, Dave Farrar is joined by Rob Smyth, Geoff Lemon and MSN Sport's Lizzy Ammon for a look back on all the drama of the fourth Test at Chester-le-Street.

Also up for discussion: Darren Lehmann's fiery press conference, Silicongate, and the curious case of Monty Panesar.

Will Australia come out fighting at The Oval next week, or will England humiliate them further? Join us again on Monday 26 August.

Ben GreenRob SmythGeoff Lemon

The Ashes podcast: England retain the Ashes … unsatisfactorily

On our third Ashes podcast, Dave Farrar is joined by Andy Bull, Emma John and Rob Smyth (remember him?) to discuss all the action from the third Test at Old Trafford. A much-improved Australia gave it their best shot, but a bit of rain and some bad light helped England to the draw, giving them an unassailable lead in the series.

So, how will the final two Tests play out? What changes will Andy Flower and Darren Lehmann make to their respective line-ups? Will their be any more DRS fubars? And what was our Australian friend Jarrod Kimber - who joins us on the phone - doing with Jedward? (Those crazy Aussies.)

Have a listen, post your comments on the blog below, and join us again on Wednesday 14 August for our next pod.

Andy BullRob SmythEmma JohnBen Green

The new Samsung TV advert

'The problem with the advert is not so much sexism; it's the hackneyed gags'

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It's a bad time to be the male slob of the species, with a recent Netmums study suggesting that Homer Simpson and his ilk give fathers a bad name. Samsung are the latest company to become the target of England's national sport, faux outrage. They've been accused of sexism for their Evolutionary Husband? advert, which portrays masculinity via an uber-Homer figure who's pretty much the personification of cave masculinity. The problem with the advert is not so much sexism; it's the hackneyed gags.

Our man sits with his feet on the table, leering at the TV and waving chicken wings in the general direction of his phizog. He's a Dutch oven on legs, a boggle-eyed addlepate who speaks three languages: grunting, burping and farting. He hasn't even put his socks on properly. His weary and contrastingly sentient wife plugs a Samsung Evolution Kit into her old TV, smartening it up in an instant, and daydreams about doing the same to 'im indoors. So she plugs the Evolution Kit into his back and he instantly becomes the poster boy for multitasking metrosexuality. He cooks while entertaining the baby with a toy monkey. He paints the wall with one hand while doing calligraphy on his wife's birthday cake with the other. He gives his wife a braided ponytail with a Hoover, plays the flute while pouring champagne into a flute. Then, with a sudden screech of his derriere, his wife is snapped back to reality. A message tells us that "at least Samsung TVs are evolutionary". Whether this is in contrast to the sofa oaf, or Samsung's sense of humour, is not made clear.

AdvertisingTelevisionTelevision industryRob Smyth
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds