There was once a man who had the day of his dreams. The man was young, just 19, with willow boughs for limbs and piano player's hands. It was a summer's day at Trent Bridge, with traffic curling round the ground and the beery lads in July bloom but he batted on a Hawaiian beach at sundown, bare feet in the sea, unlit cigarette at his lips.

On Tuesday, Ashton Agar was a spinner for Australia A and Henley CC, on Wednesday he was a surprise debutant wheel-barrowed into a feeble line-up on the whim of a coach. Now he goes into the record books as the man with the highest ever Test score at No. 11 - 98 runs off 101 balls, 12 fours, two sixes - transforming a session, tipping over a match. And oh, what style! What languor!

Agar popped out to bat on his Test debut, as if on a half-remembered errand to buy a second-class stamp. Yet the pressure could not have been much greater. Australia had just lost five wickets for nine runs in 32 balls, the finest swing bowler in the world was reverse-swinging at 85mph and Graeme Swann, buttoned up from the wrists of his sleeves to the ankles of his trousers had been tempting, beguiling, flighting Australian batsmen into heavy-booted panic.

Waiting for Agar was Philip Hughes, tense, cussed, a man who had watched his batting partners come and go with barely the time to ask their names. Hughes was awkward, sensing the pressure of failure, the history, the deficit. The nine yellow pitches cut into the mint Trent Bridge grass lay indented like the deep wounds in the Australian batting line-up, still 98 runs behind. The groundsmen swept the pitch and repainted the crease. Agar waited calmly, patting, straightening, patting, the ground as the bowler turned on his heel and ran in. This was the beginning.

The sun in a pale blue sky sprayed with skeins of light cloud started to bake both the ground and the crowd. Agar drove Anderson straight down the ground for four. Then, four balls later, England appealed against him for a stumping off Swann. The third umpire took his time - it was close - and turned it down. But hey, what would it matter - this wouldn't take long.

Agar swept Swann for four, then flicked another boundary through point, with total relaxation. There was no tension in this man, composed without shadows. He pulled Steven Finn through midwicket, then fast and clean hit Swann straight for six. He had a lazy scratch. There was warm applause now. Hughes at the other end began to unwind joint by joint. The knitting done by Swann and Anderson started to unravel ball by ball. This was the middle.

Agar, it turned out, had good eyes, good hands, fast reflexes and an immaculate temperament. Quick between the wickets, long legs stretching forward to negate the spin, he could play both sides of the wicket. An extra-cover drive off Swann brought up the 50 partnership and for the spectators surprise turned to admiration to excitement. As he turned the ship around, they began to think, "I am here."