By David Clough, PA Sport

Michael Vaughan never wanted to play for a draw in this final Test - yet now he has no choice but to hope for an Ashes-clinching stalemate at The Oval.

A rain-affected no-result has emerged as the limit of England's ambition, thanks to their first-day frailties.

Further bad news for the home captain is that for the first time this summer the luck is beginning to even itself out.

Three significant umpiring decisions - Justin Langer, Ricky Ponting and Damien Martyn surviving when they might easily have been given out - are testament to that, and Australia could hardly complain either about eking 45.4 overs out of a humid third day on which thunder threatened throughout yet dumped only one significant shower on this quarter of south London.

With fairer weather forecast for the final two days, there is every reason to anticipate this intriguing series will culminate in an appropriate nail-biting finish some time on Monday.

One outcome, though, is already out of all sensible equations.

Although Australia's need to make the pace when play resumes could push their positive intent dangerously into reckless territory, it remains very hard to see England profiting sufficiently to have any chance of a come-from-behind victory.

More likely, as has seemed assured ever since the home batsmen fluffed their lines on Thursday, this will come down to Australia versus the English weather.

Ponting and Co have probably seen the worst of the elements by now, but they have already been pushed so far behind the clock that they will have to do everything right to preclude the draw at which Vaughan was so busily turning up his nose in his preview press conferences.

A hectic day is in prospect when Australia's batsmen will be committed to a plan of controlled aggression in the hope of giving Shane Warne a significant lead to bowl with on a wearing pitch.

The hosts' best bet for a riposte remains the tireless and, in this series, peerless Andrew Flintoff who became the first England player since Ian Botham to make 300 runs and take 20 wickets in an Ashes series.

It is fitting that Flintoff should have put himself in a statistical elite, given the way he has bestridden this summer as England have exceeded expectations.

If he manages to have a say too in whether his team can make the final leap which reclaims the Ashes there will be no argument that his feats - if more attritional with the ball than his famous all-round forebear - can fairly be described as 'Botham-esque'.

The balance of probability, though, is that those more traditional English allies - rain and bad light - will be the ones which tip the balance and finally foil the Aussies this time.