Chelsea chairman Ken Bates was somewhere under a blue sky at the start of a 14-day Caribbean cruise.

You can bet not one of the 34,000 fans who packed into a cold and rain-swept Stamford Bridge would have swapped places with him after a match which was a supreme advert for Premiership football.

Andy Cole scored the second-half goal which cancelled out Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink's opener and earned the point which takes Manchester United one step nearer their seventh Premiership title.

But if United's new commercial partners at the New York Yankees were watching they could only have been delighted with the product they have bought into.

Style, commitment, desperate defending and fabulous attacking - they were all on show in one of those all-out attacking displays which was a throwback to those titanic clashes of the seventies.

Chelsea's new Danish international Jesper Gronkjaer ran United ragged at times with some mesmeric wing play. But ultimately this match ended in stalemate due to Paul Scholes, who deserved to wear a face as red as his hair for much of the 90 minutes.

It was his bizarre back-header which handed Hasselbaink the first-half goal which threatened to inflict United's first league defeat of 2001.

Then, with United surging forward in that fabulous second-half, Scholes inexplicably failed to score with a free header with an open goal at his mercy. But if those were the vital statistics of a match which saw United's Premiership lead cut to 13 points following Arsenal's triumph over Ipswich, they told little of the strirring action which unfolded at Stamford Bridge.

Chelsea this season have been the enigma of the Premiership - imperious at home, yet little more than abject away from Stamford Bridge.

So today was undoubtedly the biggest test of manager Claudio Ranieri's five-month reign. "Have you ever seen Chelsea win the league," the United fans taunted. And few would have since they last lifted the Championship title back in 1955.

They won't this year, but when you witness the world-class resources on which they have to draw the 25 points with which they trail United is one of football's craziest statistics.

John Terry, the home-grown defender earning rave reviews to the extent that he has split the central partnership of World Cup-winning stars Frank Leboeuf and Marcel Desailly, was sublime at the heart of the Blues rearguard. And for an hour or so it looked as if United might be sliding to another embarrassment in north London - having lost there 5-0 16 months ago.

It certainly looked that way in the 24th minute when we witnessed Scholes' moment of madness - a backpass which must rank as one of the most bizarre decisions of the England midfielder's career.

Gronkjaer curled in a cross from the right and the danger looked have passed when the ball was met by the imposing presence of Jaap Stam's bullet head. The ball looped to the edge of the area but, instead of heading it further clear or hacking it into Row Z Scholes inexplicably headed it back towarn goal in an attempt to find goalkeeper Raimond van der Gouw.

It never looked like reaching its intended destination.

Instead there was Hasselbaink, prowling on the edge of the six-yard box alive and alert to any scraps which might be going. As it happened he barely had to move, simply twisting his neck to send a header bobbling past van der Gouw.

Scholes, meanwhile, simply held his head in shame. It was, however, no more than Chelsea had deserved in a first-half in particular which they showed they had the style and the firepower to match the champions-elect.

So much of their thrust comes from Gronkjaer, whose pace and trickery was a constant menace. Time and again he slipped past Gary Neville or inside Wes Brown, bringing a couple of outstanding saves from van der Gouw.

But it was his mesmeric thrust in the 47th minute which should have given Chelsea the comfort of a two-goal cushion. He picked up the ball well inside his own half and his twinkling feet left three defenders in his wake.

Unselfishly he crossed for Hasselbaink who appeared to have an empty goal to aim at, but he delayed his shot and Mikael Silvestre stretched to get in the saving tackle. If that was lucky then United were even more fortunate 10 minutes later when Gianfranco Zola had the ball in the United net, again in the most bizarre circumstances.

Van der Gouw tried to shepherd the ball out for a goal-kick, only to see it hit the corner flag and, quick as a flash, Zola was there to steal the ball and hook it into the net from an oblique angle.

Chelsea celebrated but referee David Elleray, to United's relief, deemed the ball had gone out of play. United, however, have not won six Premiership titles in the last decade by lying down in the heat of battle.

And in the second-half, urged on by irrepressible captain Roy Keane, they displayed the steel as well as the style which has made them such a dominant force.

Andy Cole dragged his shot across the face of goal when in a promising position. Ryan Giggs, too, went close with a 20-yard screamer which just cleared the Chelsea crossbar.

And Scholes was booked for a late challenge on Dennis Wise as the United momentum reached feverish proportions. The equaliser, when it came, was as inevitable as it was precise. A pinpoint pass from Giggs into the path of Cole, whose lunge beat the despairing tackle of Desailly and the dive of goalkeeper Cudicini.

Scholes should have sealed the victory, as should Cole and Keane with late efforts, but that would have been tough on Chelsea.

At the end both sides were moderately happy - for United it was a competitive warm-up, full of edge and bite, before their Champions League foray to Valencia in midweek.

For Chelsea boss Ranieri it was confirmation that they are not that far behind United after all. Still, Chelsea managing director Colin Hutchinson had welcomed United to Stamford Bridge by congratulating them on another Premiership title - with a shade less than a third of the campaign still to go.

Nothing that happened today will change that.

Teams:

Chelsea: Cudicini, Babayaro, Leboeuf, Desailly, Terry, Ferrer (Lambourde 87), Wise, Dalla Bona, Gronkjaer (Jokanovic 70), Hasselbaink, Zola (Gudjohnsen 90).

Subs Not Used: de Goey, Stanic.

Goals: Hasselbaink 24.

Man Utd: Van Der Gouw, Gary Neville, Stam, Brown, Silvestre, Giggs, Keane, Scholes, Beckham, Solskjaer, Cole.

Subs Not Used: Rachubka, Butt, Sheringham, Phil Neville, Yorke.

Booked: Scholes, Cole.

Goals: Cole 69.

Att: 34,960

Ref: D Elleray (Harrow-on-the-Hill).