A classic revisited: A press box view of Edgbaston '05

Despite a helter-skelter start by England, Australia's 2005 campaign to retain the Ashes for a ninth consecutive series quickly assumed a familiar appearance when Ricky Ponting's team completed a thumping 239-run win in the opening Test at Lord's. But the home team's fightback ended in perhaps the greatest Ashes Test of modern times, which reached its memorable climax on this day in 2005. This was the view from the Edgbaston press box.

The sense of contentment that settled upon the Australian camp after Lord's turned on a single cricket ball, placed on the turf as part of a fielding drill before play began in the second Test at Edgbaston.

During a light run to warm up for the warm-up, the Australians lazily flicked a rugby ball from one to another.

It was as Glenn McGrath stretched to haul in a wide pass that his full body weight landed on the ball, turning his right ankle into a right angle, with the joint's ligaments stretched so far they almost ripped in half.

The man whose nine wickets had effectively determined the Lord's result was removed, face drained of colour, from the playing arena aboard a golf cart. As his teammates silently feared, Australia's fortunes then disappeared into the medical room with him.

The hobbling of Australia's best pace bowler half an hour before start time might have provided ample fodder for early editions of newspapers at home, but it didn't faze Ponting, who again pushed stubbornly ahead with his scripted plan to bowl when the coin fell in his favour.

That decision, built on a belief that there was residual moisture in the pitch, drew a sharp rebuke from Shane Warne, who saw it as a major tactical blunder. It was the first detectable hiss of discontent to seep from the tourists' dressing room during a Test campaign that was to unravel with increasing speed.

By stumps, Ponting could justifiably point to the fact that his bowlers had captured all 10 English wickets. That they fell for a tick over 400 runs probably vindicated his leg-spinner.

It wasn't only McGrath's lower leg that had twisted beyond recognition.

With no obvious warning, the Australians found themselves confronted by an opponent recast in their own image – combative and fearless - as the frantic tempo of Lord's only stepped up in Birmingham.

When the fourth morning dawned, the transition was all but complete. The home nation converged on Edgbaston in ecstasy, and around radios and televisions as if awaiting a Churchillian pronouncement.

Australia's three least-credentialled batsmen (statistically at least) – Warne, Brett Lee and McGrath's late replacement Michael Kasprowicz - needed to pilfer more than 100 runs from an England bowling attack that had dismembered their opponents' top order twice in the space of a weekend.

The result seemed as clear as the Midlands' summer morning, and my mood was correspondingly bright having laboured through the night to chronicle the remarkable volteface.

The first three stories completed and sent for the next morning's paper just hours from being printed all canvassed Australia's stunning slide. The fourth, awaiting only confirmation of the final margin, dealt with England's resurgence.

Then, with a deadline ticking ever closer, Australia's tailenders snicked, poked and bravely swung within range of their unlikely target.

There often comes a point, if compiling running copy from a live sporting event, when the unfolding reality diverges irreparably from any carefully prepared script.

At those times, the journalist's conundrum is whether to sit tight in the belief that it's but an aberration, and that what once appeared likely will indeed come to pass. Or to concede you've got it horribly wrong and begin furiously rewriting.

For me, on that loopy final morning at Edgbaston, that defining moment arrived around 30 minutes before I was to fill a gaping hole in the paper's second edition.

When Brett Lee's three boundaries in a single over reduced Australia's goal to 33 runs, England's remained a solitary wicket. And there had also arisen the very real chance of Test cricket's third dead heat over the course of almost 130 years.

Whatever the result, it was destined to neatly intersect with the newspaper's deadline in Sydney.

So there was no choice but to prepare three stories of roughly equal lengths dealing with all plausible contingencies. Had there been time, I would also have panicked.

Instead, I started frantically creating new documents, hurriedly copying and pasting words that could transcend any outcome, and madly fashioning new introductory sections that shrieked 'Australia Wins!' Or 'England Wins!' Or 'Nobody Wins!'

Juggling more screens than a bashful fan dancer, the only time I shifted attention from the laptop was when the phone rang.

'Australia's gunna win this, it's one of the greatest Tests ever played,' I was told by someone on the Sydney news desk whose cricket nous was matched only by their gift for overstatement.

'We're gunna run it on the front page. So we'll need a twenty-five-centimetre write-off from you as soon as they hit the winning runs.'

I was now beyond stressed. The need for a separate, standalone article for the news section that complemented, but not duplicated, what would appear in the sports pages raised the degree of difficulty to a level beyond my impaired cognitive functions.

Instead of managing three concurrent stories, I suddenly had six on the go. And the margin had narrowed to 15 runs. An over later, it was whittled to six.

Two nations' attention then focused on a sward in the English Midlands. The final overs of perhaps the most famous Ashes encounter transfixed households. Entire suburbs.

It lives on in the memory of everyone watching, whether adhered to television or sitting, in gut-churning tension, among the spellbound crowd.

Everyone except journalists working to Australian deadlines.

For the last half-hour, I saw not a single delivery, not a solitary run, nor even the tragi-triumphant final act when Kasprowicz lost his wicket to an agonisingly (perhaps even contentious) unlucky brush of the glove to a Steve Harmison bouncer with Australia three runs shy of victory.

Two runs short of a tie.

When that moment of history was finally written, and the enduring image of Flintoff consoling a clearly distraught Lee in a moment of poignant sportsmanship was framed, my sole concern was ensuring the right version of the appropriate story was sent to its correct destination.

And that I had interpreted the scoreboard correctly.

Andrew Ramsey covered the 2005 Ashes series for The Australian newspaper. This is an edited extract from his book 'The Wrong Line' published by ABC Books and available HERE.