Ben Stokes makes himself the point of difference against South Africa

Ben Stokes showed high-craft ability to get the old ball to swing and take crucial wickets either side of tea. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

This was a day of hard, thirsty, sinew-straining graft at the Oval, and not just for that significant part of the crowd that offered its own celebration of the life of Queen Elizabeth II by drinking itself into a state of stumbling oblivion under a sallow September sun. We all grieve in our separate ways.

But it was also a grinding day of Test cricket in the middle. Not a great day or a high-calibre day, or a day to shift the sense of two scratchy, strung-out teams playing a kind of fever cricket.