By David Clough, PA Sport

A nation's attention converged in expectation today at The Oval ... and Shane Warne made sure England were found wanting.

The world's leading wicket-taker added another five - the ninth time he has done so against this opposition - to disappoint an audience of 23,000-plus in the ground and millions more in their English sitting rooms as he kept his team alive in the 2005 Ashes.

Just as he has all summer, Warne bailed out the Aussies - this time on a day when England had the opportunity to shut the door for good on Ricky Ponting's tourists and put themselves in a position from which it should have been near impossible to lose this deciding rubber.

Yet instead of standing on the brink of their first Ashes series victory in 18 years, Michael Vaughan's team know there is much more hard work to be done over the next four days.

Put simply - even with the help of a determined hundred from Andrew Strauss - England missed an open-goal chance to bat their opponents out of a match Australia must win to salvage a drawn series and therefore retain the Ashes.

Those who came to south London, or were watching on television, in the hope of sporting consolation following England's soccer shambles in Belfast were therefore disappointed.

In this summer sport, of course, it was ever thus. The aficionados could have saved the cavalry the trouble of discovering cricket is not and never will be the new football.

It used to take five days to decide most Test matches, and even in the fast-forward modern era three or four are still usually a minimum.

The soccer refugees in this crowd, or anyone else along for the ride hoping for a quick fix, will simply have to return tomorrow - and maybe even three more times after that - to find out how this wonderfully intriguing series will conclude.

With tickets priced at a minimum £40 and going anecdotally at £600 and upwards from touts outside the ground, it will be a costly business.

But few could have complained about what they got from their money on day one of this, the most important Test to take place in this country for many a year.

There was sweat and not a little skill from Strauss, who concentrated manfully for 150 balls over a hundred England badly needed; there was some hard work and then thunderous strokeplay from the opener's fifth-wicket sidekick Andrew Flintoff.

Most of all, though, there was Warne.

Playing in his final Test match in this country, Warne knew from the outset there would be no help in an Oval surface which looked made for batting.

He overcame the disappointment of a lost toss which meant he could not even look forward to the prospect of bowling last on a wearing pitch later in this match - and called upon before the first hour was up this morning, he simply got stuck in.

Two of Warne's wickets came from faulty shots - Vaughan and Kevin Pietersen the culprits - while he deceived Ian Bell for a duck and got Strauss and his opening partner Marcus Trescothick through sheer persistence.

For good measure, Warne slipped in a neat slip catch to complete perhaps the most important dismissal of the day - that of Flintoff to end a fifth-wicket stand of 154.

It was a virtuoso performance, and even if the vast majority came to The Oval today hoping for something very different, who among them could help but admire what they had witnessed from one of cricket's all-time greats?