England v South Africa, NatWest Series, Tuesday 8 July 2003
Edgbaston, Birmingham |
Warwickshire chief executive Dennis Amiss was celebrating a record full house at Edgbaston.
New seating in the Eric Hollies stand means the gound has a new capacity of 22,000.
With 1,000 seats set aside for the black sightscreens, 21,000 came through the gates for the day/night match.
"We've had to turn people away having sold out two or three weeks ago," Amiss said.
"There's a tremendous atmosphere and I think we're probably a bit surprised by a full house for a day/night match."
Equally surprising is that none of the days for the forthcoming Test between the sides is sold out, although Amiss is confident that the second and third days of the match will be full houses.
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The gasp of amazement that went round the ground when Andrew Flintoff caught Jacques Kallis at slip was also felt in the Test Match Special commentary box.
 |  Henry, calm down. Me and my work mate are worried about your health |
Henry Blofeld almost blew the microphone in excitement.
"It was a stupendous catch and Flintoff is the only man in the England team who could have done that," Blofeld said.
"He took it with every part of his body off the ground before holding the ball aloft in a triumphant moment.
"He has wonderful reflexes, his telescopic arm came out and that will live in the memory forever."
The rest of the team echoed Henry's words.
"That was the catch of a lifetime," Graeme Fowler said, with Jonathan Agnew describing it as "quite brilliant".
And Mike Gatting was drawing parallels with Ian Botham. "I saw Beefy take a few of those in his time with his astonishing reflexes, so I can say it was Bothamesque," Gatt said.
It is a day/night match, the coin goes up and comes down in your favour. "We'll bat" follows as night follows day.
That was the case at Edgbaston where South Africa's Graeme Smith won the toss and was happy to don the pads, giving his bowlers the chance to reap havoc during the English dusk later in the day.
But the decision meant the tourists had to buck a summer trend, which they failed to do.
Only one of the 11 international one-day matches this season have been won by the team batting first, and under lights, despite the perceived disadvantage, the team batting second has won on all three occasions.
Smith's reasoning may have had something to do with South Africa's last visit to Edgbaston.
They won the toss and sent Australia into bat in the World Cup semi-final.
We all know what happened next, as does a tight-lipped Allan Donald in the TMS box.
Allan Donald blamed South Africa's collapse from 65-1 to 104-7 on testosterone.
The tourists came out firing, with 19 coming off James Anderson's first over.
However, they were soon firing blanks, Anderson coming back to take three wickets for one run in his second spell.
"They wanted to put one over England before the final and be more aggressive," Donald revealed.
"The plan worked and they did that successfully against Anderson, but they kept the tempo up when they needed to calm down. It's all that testosterone."
MMIX
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