Test matches at Headingley rarely come without a surprise package and the first day of the decisive final match of this series proved no exception.

By the end of a seam-dominated day Mark Butcher's wonderfully competent maiden Test century was followed by a fold-up of the lower order that sent the innings tumbling to 230 all out, with Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock and Makhaya Ntini sharing the wickets. South Africa, given four overs to bat in reply, had reached nine without loss.

Against all historical evidence, which tells that only once has a spinner taken five wickets in a Test innings here since 1980, England chose to jettison the left-arm pace of Alan Mullally in favour of Ian Salisbury's leg-spin. Already that is looking like a big mistake, one not reflected by South Africa, who replaced one seamer, Steve Elworthy, with another, Ntini, and brought in Brian McMillan's all-round skills in place of their solitary spinner Paul Adams.

The cause, alas, was not helped by more umpiring controversy. Three of the top seven England batsmen were out to decisions that ranged from the doubtful (Nasser Hussain, who was deemed by Peter Willey to have got the thinnest of touches to a delivery from Pollock) via the obscure (Andrew Flintoff suffered an alleged bat-pad catch at short leg) to the dubious (Mark Ramprakash, given out to a diving catch by Mark Boucher which the replays clearly called into question). Butcher's was a high-quality innings and shone like a beacon, even if in reaching three figures he rode his luck almost recklessly. He had already reached 93, the highest score of his 13-Test career, when he drove extravagantly outside his off stump at McMillan's medium pace and edged the ball at catchable height and pace through second slip.

Hansie Cronje had decided that such a fielder was superfluous and the ball sped to the boundary. In his following over, McMillan sent down similar bait, full and a fraction wider, and Butcher once more went for it. The edge this time flew between a pair of gully fielders and once more to the boundary.

Butcher's had been a remarkably composed effort on a tense, attritional day that appeared to be heading England's way until the late flurry of wickets evened things up. Until Cork's last-ditch bat-flinging - he was undefeated at the end - no other batsman scored more than Ramprakash's 21, made of a fourthwicket partnership of 71, the best of the day by a distance, that had taken the score to 181 for three.

Seven overs after Ramprakash's dismissal, Butcher's stand was ended by a tired flay at Pollock outside off stump that he dragged on to middle, and three balls after that the realities of modern Test cricket were brought home to Flintoff when a deflection from the middle of his left pad to short leg was adjudged by the Pakistani umpire Javed Akhtar to have touched his bat first.

Graeme Hick, meanwhile, had struggled for 19 balls before he got off the mark, but then tamely swatted a catch to point that might have sent his chances of a winter Test tour receding into the distance. The wickets of Salisbury and Gough then fell to Ntini so that at 213 for nine, six wickets had fallen for 32.