Twickenham hero Duhan van der Merwe said he even surprised himself with his world-beating first try, as Scotland lifted the Calcutta Cup for the fifth time in six years.
The flying winger ran in two sublime tries in a ding-dong battle at Twickenham, making 104 metres from eight carries, beating 10 defenders in the process.
His first will go down as one of the all-time great Guinness Six Nations tries, an outrageous slaloming run from well inside his own half, and his second a bulldozing cut inside to win the match in the 74th minute.
Van der Merwe was beaming in his post-match interview, insisting that his performance was only what is expected of him.
The Guinness Six Nations Player of the Match said: “As a winger you don’t get a lot of opportunities so I needed to take them. After I scored my first I was also quite surprised. I’ll take that any day.
“At the end of the day, I always say it, that’s my job.”
Huw Jones and Max Malins traded tries midway through a breathless first period, with Van der Merwe’s effort taking centre stage soon after.
A second for Malins and a third England try after the restart from Ellis Genge gave the hosts an 20-12 advantage heading into the final half an hour.
But Ben White’s smart swivel and finish set up a pulsating finale, with Van der Merwe settling the match after Owen Farrell and Finn Russell had exchanged three-pointers.
The 27-year-old was delighted with his side’s performance, particularly in the second half, and said it was the perfect preparation for the visit of Wales next Saturday.
Van der Merwe said: “We came here to start the campaign off on a high. In the first half we knew we had more in us, came out second half with a bang and managed to get the win over England so we’re obviously buzzing.
“They scored quite early. We said that we just need to stay in the fight. We managed to get a few points on the board and we got some confidence from that.
“We spoke about getting our first win of the Six Nations and now next week we just need to build some confidence on that and hopefully get our second one.”
And Van der Merwe’s coach Gregor Townsend said he and his coaching staff felt even more impassioned than his players at the final whistle, but still thought his team could raise the bar even higher.
Townsend said: “It was some result for us and to do it in the last five, 10 minutes, it was one of the most emotional games in the coaching box.
“I don’t think the players ever get as emotional as we do when you hang on to win and you’ve just scored a really good try to go ahead.
“I think the two pleasing aspects from it is that we’ve talked about raising our floor, our minimum level of performance and that’s shown through our effort, our togetherness and that was there today.
“But also our ceiling is a lot higher than that. We didn’t get to play until well into the second half.
“We’ll be better for today and we’re going to make sure that next week we put in a better performance.”
