The Ashes 2023: England's win at Headingley shows chaos reigns in this series - Felix White

Felix White is a musician, author and co-host of the BBC's Tailenders podcast.

In his fourth column for BBC Sport this summer, he discusses how chaos is the only constant in this gripping Ashes series, following England's dramatic victory over Australia in the third Test.

Everything you dared imagine it might be. It was that.

But probably not in any of the ways you thought it would get there.

The third Ashes Test at Headingley, which England won by three wickets, was another jaw dropping, crazed, thing of see-sawing substance.

Under bat-friendly blue skies to bowl-friendly cloud cover to nothing-friendly thunder and back, it was a tingly, giddy form of Test cricket; ringing out our insides, calling our bluff, never once letting us drift into phones without fear of returning with no context whatsoever on the game situation.

And as we watched, eyes clamped open yet unsure whether it was out of will or torture, there were moments it appeared to tip into genuine chaos.

Cricket is a sitting duck for a phrase like chaos.

The game, after all, is an attempt to assert order and meaning to isolated, individual events stacked upon each other again and again.

It pleases us to log them, to marry the present against the past and measure it appropriately, sign something off on a scorecard, tell a story that gives a satisfying conclusion.

It is, in part, why this series has been so confronting, dizzying and strangely intrusive.

The Headingley Test unfolded at a helter-skelter pace, where there felt like no sense of order to the phases of play, nor the time to process it if there had been.

The ground itself kicked this contrariness off, the opening punches met with a stunned, polite silence where we had been promised fervour that required riot police.

It might have been stilled by the way actual danger of genuinely quick bowling can affect a space as Mark Wood, back and at his best, bowled one of the fastest spells in recorded Test history.

Australia's top order received him with looks on their faces like they had just been forced to taste battery acid.

But don't think there was any pattern to this. Mitchell Marsh, airlifted into the Australian XI last minute and Testless for four years, played Wood with poise, craft and muscle, on the way to his 'hundred on holiday'.

The denial of received wisdom went on in almost every passing moment.

England have now dropped almost an entire Test match worth of catches yet still, somehow, found themselves constantly within plausible reach of a series-saving win.

When they collapsed in their first innings, looking like they were running out of paper for ever-widening cracks, Wood came straight out of a lunch break swinging at everything.

You sensed even to his own surprise, he connected with quite a lot and, alongside an ever more grimacing Stokes, dragged England close to parity.

It hadn't yet dawned on us, but it soon would. This particular chaos of 2023 has developed its own kind of order. There are patterns to it now, cycles of habit that re-occur.

It has developed its own life and rhythm where, regardless of personnel or conditions or game situation, momentum is destined to just wildly pivot from one side to the other, each unable to ever get anywhere resembling a stronghold in any game.

The penny dropped, as if a spell on an entire ground, at the end of day two.

It's almost exactly halfway through the series. Australia are building slowly on a second innings lead. The pitch is not doing anything. It is threatening to become old-fashioned Test cricket.

Wood, unable to rest properly, cannot affect the same spell he had the previous day. All knowledge of Test-cricket-as-a-metaphor-for-an-arm-wrestle suggests this is the moment where the resistance is broken and the arm snaps back.

Marnus Labuschagne has just been dropped by Jonny Bairstow off Wood, both bowler and wicketkeeper ending up face down, avoiding eye contact.

Australia will now take this game and series away from a wasteful England. They will make England pay.

Yet, inexplicably, an over later, Labuschagne is out slog-sweeping to Moeen Ali. It's a very unusual shot he never really plays.

Minutes later, Steve Smith gifts a catch off Moeen too. It too is an alien shot for such a methodical, precise cricketer. As Smith leaves, waving his arm back at Bairstow as if he had said something far worse than, "Cheers Smudge" to him, the chaos has indelibly set its own pattern.

It is one unbreakable now by any player. As we watch Smith leave, we let it roll over us too, no more trying to trap it in past experience.

And there is the chaos as order. England and Australia, whether they like it or not, are joined at the hip now, unable to wiggle free for any sort of breathing space.

They have unlearned how to do anything but hold each other for time, fatally unaware of how much the other fighter has left in the tank.

We might all continue to say, "You can't make those mistakes at this level and get away with it," for another two weeks. But the truth of this summer is, well, maybe you can.

It has its own laws going on. Its own set of dynamics.

The heady concoction of two sides polarised in approach, learning to hate each other again, both wearing their growing desperation to win but plagued by their own inevitable conditioning to hand games back too, is almost its own form of series.

Bazball might be to Test cricket what punk was to rock'n'roll - really good but essentially the same thing, slightly quicker, with some new catchphrases - but the combination of these two teams, in this moment, maybe really is something new.

Something not even 2005 can claim to understand.

It's more flawed than Test cricket has been in the past. But it's also, by and large, more brilliant.

It repeated from there, the chaos we are learning. Travis Head bludgeoning Australia back into contention. Joe Root caught down the leg side when looking set to win the game. Harry Brook, just when he looked like he had done it, skying one to send Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins on a collision course, the ball eventually landing safely with the Australian captain.

It was more than fitting, amid all this fizzing energy and near constant sharp intaking of breath, that Chris Woakes and Mark Wood were there at the end, having both cut heart-warmingly reassuring figures throughout.

There is something uplifting, moving and even profound about watching Wood play cricket these days. He knows his body may give up on him again at any moment, yet his every act still has a youthful effervescence to it.

His contribution this Test was one of joyful, unshowy wisdom to appreciate life when it falls for you.

Next to Woakes, remarkably playing his first Test in over a year and complete with new grey shout through his hair, they gave the whole thing a much-needed access point.

Both are very unlikely to be involved the next time an Ashes comes to England. We might say the same for much of this England team.

Playing leading roles and balancing this new regime's levity with their natural affability and humility, through Wood and Woakes this period of English cricket was suddenly framed infinitely tighter.

Not as a rebellious new awakening, or a reinvention of the wheel, or a doomed experiment, but a singular moment in time that no-one will have access to again once this summer is gone.

As Woakes cleared his front leg and crashed the winning runs, a vision of Stokes in 2019, he waited for Wood to meet him in the middle.

When they met, clattering into each other, it was a reminder of the rewards of perseverance, a victory for friendship and staying at it, even when it all looks bleak.

For a conclusion borne out of chaos, it was an even more satisfying one than either order or purpose could have coughed up.

• England must not throw away this momentum - Agnew