After three full days in the field under a merciless sun and the disappointment of not winning here, a flat feeling (not least in the feet) will have accompanied England on last night's flight to Cape Town where the fourth Test begins on Sunday. The third Test finally raised the white flag and surrendered as a draw late yesterday afternoon at Kingsmead. The final day had promised much for England, but by the close the South Africans had batted them to a standstill. To force a win England needed the clouds to roll in, the humidity to rise and early wickets, but instead they got blue skies and another day of searing heat.

Until the very end two wickets were all they managed, that of the nightwatchman Mark Boucher, a first Test wicket for Chris Adams, but not before Boucher had scored the third hundred of his Test career (he is just a nightwatchman in the way that Bach merely wrote pretty tunes), and Lance Klusener, bowled by Mark Butcher's excellent offbreak when he had havoc on his mind.

But all day they had not seen the back of Gary Kirsten, not until the very last ball of the match. The lefthander had walked out to open the second innings shortly before 4pm on Tuesday with South Africa facing defeat and he himself under pressure for his place.

So he batted on and on, through Wednesday and then on and on through yesterday for good measure, saving the side and saving himself. By the time Butcher, to Kirsten's embarrassment, spun one behind his legs and clipped the offstump, he had been batting for 875 minutes, or more than 14 hours and scored 275.

No one, apart from Hanif Mohammad who 42 years ago spent 970 minutes for Pakistan in Bridgetown warding off West Indies, has batted for longer in a Test and no South African has scored more (although Daryll Cullinan, who made 275 against New Zealand last year and was sitting in the dressing room watching, must have been sweating over his record).

Kirsten's innings, and that of Boucher, together with the contributions of Jacques Kallis on Wednesday and Klusener yesterday had seen South Africa beyond the safety zone and as the umpires pulled up the stumps the scoreboard showed 572 for seven, which was a fair riposte to their first innings when they had been all out for 156 and followed on.

Only Pakistan in Hanif's match have exceeded it when asked to bat again. The innings had been built on partnerships with Kirsten and Boucher's 192, a new fifth-wicket record for South Africa against England, followed by another of 101 between Kirsten and Klusener. As an acknowledgement of his monumental effort Kirsten was made man of the match but only jointly with Andy Caddick, who bowled them out so boldly first time around.

For all their ordeal, England remained unbowed and competitive, keeping their spirit and composure intact. But Hansie Cronje knew precisely what he was doing when he batted on way past safety, not allowing the England bowlers even one minute with their feet up, even though his own bowlers could have had a tilt at England for an hour just to try to heap on a bit of embarrassment for good measure.