ANYONE asking beforehand for England's chances of utterly dominating the first Test would have been quoted roughly the same odds as those for Elvis Presley turning up at Edgbaston with his sarnies and Tizer.

Well, already this has been a Test match to defy logic: Elvis, mega-quiffed and rhinestone-spangled, duly took his seat in the front row of the Rae Bank Stand yesterday, and England, incredibly, continued the process of grinding Australia into the dust.

After the bowling of the first day, this was the one on which English batsmanship flourished, as if released from chains that have bound it since the glories of a dozen years ago when Gower, Gatting and Gooch bestrode the summer and put Australia to the sword.

Resuming the second day on 80 and 83 respectively, Nasser Hussain and Graham Thorpe had reached their centuries within 40 minutes and were not parted until shortly after lunch they had nothing better to do, Hussain said later - by which time the Surrey lefthander had made 138, the fifth and highest century of his Test career and his third against Australia.

With the aid of an exhilarating morning's cricket that brought 135 runs in two stupendous hours, the fourth wicket stand had yielded 288 at close on a run-a- minute, and by 66 an English record for the wicket against Australia.

Hussain, however, will treasure the day into his dotage, and the moment in particular when he picked Shane Warne's flipper and rocked hack to slash it emphatically to the third man boundary for the runs that took him to a double century.

Fifteen minutes late?, with tea approaching, he propped forward one last time to Warne, edged to Ian Healy, and walked off to a standing ovation. In seven-and-a-quarter hours Hussain had made 207, against Australia a score bettered only by Ken Barrington (256) and Gower (215, on this same ground, in 1985) since the war.

He had hit 38 boundaries, the majority with pure driving of the highest calibre. No bowler escaped: Warne was driven and out as if he were a novice; Glenn McGrath suffered whenever he pitched the ball up.

By the time the anticipated rain washed in to bring an end to proceedings 100 minutes early, Mark Ealham (32) and Robert Croft (18) had taken England on to 449 for six, a first innings lead already of 331.

It leaves Australia floundering desperately for their survival in the knowledge that for the last five Ashes campaigns the side which won the first Test has gone on to take the series.