Forty-eight hours later, the dust is starting to settle on one of England's great wins, when the folk hero Ben Stokes and the cult hero Jack Leach combined to level the Ashes.
The delirium is coming to an end, the compulsion to watch the highlights just one more time almost finished.
And when it does, England will remember and acknowledge that Stokes’ heroics saved the day.
In the immediate bedlam, Stuart Broad rightly said that one innings “had papered over the cracks” of a poor performance.
Without it, the many Ashes post-mortems that were being prepared would have been published and a period of deep introspection would have followed.
On Friday, England fans bemoaned the corrosive impact of white-ball cricket on England’s Test batting, as their top order performed a series of wretched shots to be bowled out for 67 - their third score under 100 this year.
They have also capitulated four times inside a session in three years, having not suffered such ignominy since before the Second World War.
England’s white-ball rise, so the narrative goes, had come at the cost of their Test cricket, which had been neglected for too long with a series of silly selections and the marginalisation of first-class cricket.
And yet, England won the same game because of skills honed in white-ball cricket, with Stokes pulling off one of the most remarkably clinical displays of six-hitting in Test cricket history.
The reverse-slog-sweep and the ramp, not to mention the pick-up over square-leg and the lofted drive down the ground, were strokes forged by Stokes in the limited-overs formats.
White-ball batting both got England into a pickle, then completed their escape from it (with some help from some good old-fashioned Test batting from Joe Root, Joe Denly and Stokes beforehand).
England are the embodiment of modern Test cricket - a more boom-or-bust version of the game that is run by bowlers not batsmen (unlike its white-ball cousins).
All that, to only slightly misquote Marilyn Monroe, does not mean that “if you can’t handle England at their 67 (or 85, or 77, or 58) all out, then you sure as hell don’t deserve them at their 76-run 10th-wicket partnership to chase 359”.
Clearly, all is not well with England’s long-form batting and they must strike a better balance – as Stokes showed, it cannot all be about hitting boundaries.
The selectors should not be afraid to make changes before the Old Trafford Test a week on Wednesday just because England won.
England have a batting order that contains one white-ball batsman too many – five of their World Cup-winning top six are in their Test team – and too many players slightly out of position.
Jason Roy and Jos Buttler are both averaging below 10 for the series, look tired, and know they are under pressure for their place.
Only one of that pair should make the XI at any one time from now on. Buttler has a Test future but, given how drained he appears by this summer, he should spend some time on the sidelines.
Chris Woakes, who will probably be replaced by the returning James Anderson, is in a similar position.
The jury is out on Roy as a Test batsman, let alone opener, and it might be time to slip him down the order to No6.
Denly has earned more time in the side with his doughty half-century and, while it might seem strange to move him just as he has shown some skill, England are considering him as an opener once more.
That is because, in Test cricket, he has almost always managed to get in, which is more than can be said for Roy, and the next cab off the rank, Ollie Pope, would bat in the middle order. Dom Sibley and, particularly, Zak Crawley seem close, but Pope is next in.
There remains plenty to fix in England’s batting, and there is no reason not to start now.