Ross Stapleton writes:

We
won’t bore you with the retelling of how Australia fell just three runs
short of an incredible second Test victory in Birmingham (nor how
England fell in by just two runs of the game being tied). But let’s
hear of how a nation escaped the equivalent of an Ashes death by 107
cuts to the throat from three tail-end batsmen, as England now
rides a tidal wave of euphoric relief that sees the Ashes tied 1-1.
With the third Test starting on Thursday in Manchester, who can now
deny England may yet have the right stuff for an amazing
come-from-behind series win?

As for the Test
many are already calling the greatest ever, you’d be hard pressed to find
people at the ground who won’t be telling their grand-children: “I was
there the day England clutched victory from the jaws of defeat!”

Angus Fraser in London’s Independent:
“England’s fielders and a partisan crowd went wild. Jones was ecstatic,
and started gesturing to a section of Australian spectators who had
been goading him, while the rest of the team ran around like headless
chickens. How England and this Ashes series needed that wicket. Vaughan
admitted there would have been no way back if Australia had moved 2-0
up in the series.”

Christopher Martin-Jenkins in The Times:
“Such sweet agony! So nearly denied by the unquenchable spirit of
opponents who, yesterday at least, had nothing to lose, England won the
second Test ten minutes after noon at Edgbaston by two runs, the
narrowest margin in 308 Test matches against Australia. Thereby they
levelled the series with three games to play, saved it from anticlimax
and virtually guaranteed further hardly bearable suspense before the
destiny of the Ashes becomes certain five weeks today.”

Ted Corbett in India’s The Hindu: “I
think we can call it the greatest Test match ever played even though
there have been two ties. England beat Australia by two runs when it
seemed it had lost in the second match of its attempt to regain the
Ashes. Victory came after 100 minutes of the tensest cricket since
England won an equally unlikely victory at Melbourne in 1982 and the
last four Australia batsmen drove the score from 137 for seven to 279,
an accidental edge from victory. What made this Test so special was the
way the excitement was maintained from England’s high-speed 407 on the
first day, throughout Australia’s reply of 308 and its attacking
bowling on the third day.”