What the good Lord gave to England yesterday, Lance Klusener took away as easily as lifting coins from a blind man's begging bowl. At tea on the first day of the second Test, South Africa, sent in to bat on a damp, overcast, breezy morning, had been reduced to 157 for five by dint of some outstandingly competitive English cricket, the best they have managed for a year.

Klusener was only newly arrived at the crease and the lid had been kept on Jonty Rhodes so successfully that he had laboured through 22 overs and managed just 14 runs. In the course of 20 overs after the interval it changed as Nasser Hussain, a man in total control for two sessions, lost his grip on the game.

By the time the players left the field 14 overs early because of bad light Andy Flintoff, in the middle of his first over, had had Rhodes well caught to his left by Mike Atherton, a solitary slip so wide had the field been scattered. Flintoff had been belatedly called into the attack only because the captain, it seemed, had run out of options.

But Rhodes had made his half-century by then, and he and Klusener had added 106 for the sixth wicket in just 24 rumbustious overs. There was time for Chris Silverwood, in his second Test and acquitting himself extremely well, to hit the new batsman Shaun Pollock on the left forearm before the umpires offered the batsmen the sanctuary of the dressing-room. Pollock may have taken the offer willingly but Klusener would have been unworried about continuing. His unbeaten 63 so far, from 71 balls, has contained nine fours and a six powered nonchalantly over longoff to spoil an exceptional day's work for Phil Tufnell.

It has been an innings characterised by Klusener's usual uncomplicated mix of brutal backfoot forcing square on the offside - the pace of the ball from the bat apparently disproportionate to the effort involved in striking it - and wicked block-drives from the meat of the heaviest bat in the game that leave good fielders standing agape.

When a side is put into bat, the expectation is to bowl them out for under 250 and if England were on track for a while they have been derailed. From their perspective, 256 for six is by no means an irretrievable position but they must make better use of the second new ball when it becomes available in three overs' time.

From the moment Hussain, to cheers from the English supporters in the crowd, won the first England toss abroad in 20 months, until Klusener and Rhodes put a dampener on proceedings, England had the sort of day they had been only dreaming about.

They were decisive in their selection - Silverwood getting the nod over Alex Tudor in the absence of Alan Mullally, and Tufnell also included - and in their desire to bowl first. The pitch, light straw in the heat on Wednesday, had darkened noticeably after a night spent sweating under tarpaulin and was bound to have sap in it.

Although Darren Gough, without ever stinting in his wholehearted optimism, was made to look pedestrian in three ineffective spells, Silverwood delighted on his return to the Test side after three years.

He hit Jacques Kallis on the head in his opening over with what the speedometer revealed as the fastest ball of the series so far - almost 92 m.p.h. - and generally made life uncomfortable for South Africa's most accomplished batsman before having him spectacularly caught by Andy Caddick at wide mid-on.

Caddick himself, in a brief opening burst into the wind during which he tended to bowl too short, removed Gary Kirsten, caught at gully from the shoulder of the bat. He then changed ends and made the ball zip and dart about, although he picked up no further wickets.

Of all the England bowlers however, the day belonged to Tufnell, who responded to his inclusion (a calculated risk when it is the intention to put the opposition in) by bowling better than ever he can have done on the first day of a match, and as well as at any time.

Bowling all but one of his 25 overs from the Duck Pond End, he teased and twirled, changed his pace, floated the ball up into the breeze coming at him from over the electronic scoreboard at third man, and drifted the ball in to the right-hander with the spin.

But above all (and how often have we been able to say this of the Tufnell of recent vintage?) he found turn when he allowed the ball air, perhaps out of dampness; certainly South Africa would think so for they have omitted their only spinner, Paul Adams, to make way for another paceman, Nantie Hayward.

Herschelle Gibbs, who played confidently for his 48 before he was wantonly run out by Flintoff from cover, might have been stumped off Tufnell early on as the ball left him but Alec Stewart had too far to fetch the ball back to the wicket.

But later Daryll Cullinan, who had just hit Gough for three successive boundaries as the fast bowler searched for elusive reverse swing, charged down the pitch to the first ball of a new Tufnell spell and, to the uninhibited delight of the bowler, Stewart made no mistake.

Add to that the wicket of the South African captain Hansie Cronje - a fellow whose batting reputation rests significantly on his capacity to play spin but who was suckered by flight yesterday - and it was quite a day for Tufnell. He would have enjoyed a drink on that.