Topping the bill was popular Paula Radcliffe who finally turned her brave front-running into gold in the 5,000m where she came close to breaking the world record.
True to form, Radcliffe led from almost the start and simply ran away from the field.
“I am delighted to have won because the mantle of not winning a track title had been hanging around my neck... now that is history,” she said.
Triple jumper Jonathan Edwards followed with his best jump in two years to add the Commonwealth title to his World, Olympic and European titles.
“This is fantastic because all my family were here and honestly now I have the Grand Slam it is really exceptional and something I never thought I would achieve in joining such a select band of English athletes,” he said.
Mick Jones completed a hat-trick of golds for the host nation with a huge last round heave in the men’s hammer.
Despite the English euphoria, by the end of the day, Australia were still comfortably clear at the top of the medals table ahead of England and Canada.
The Australians unearthed an exciting new star in the shape of 19-year-old 400m hurdler Jana Pittman and they captured both men’s and women’s 20km walks.
Pittman immediately sounded a warning to the others.
“I’m still learning the event as this is my first full year with the big girls and I’m getting used to it. I’m concentrating on the hurdles from now on and guess what? It’s only two years to the next Olympics.”
In the early morning marathons, there was a shock for Kenya who came up well short in their bid to clean-sweep the long distance medals.
The women’s race was won by Australia’s Kerryn McCann and the men’s went to Tanzania’s Francis Naali.
It was a great day in the shooting for India who added three more golds to the one they lifted on the opening day of the competition on Saturday to hoist them up to fourth place in the medals table.
In the opening action in the track cycling, Kerrie Meares took gold for Australia in the women’s 500m time-trial, while Chris Hoy gave Scotland its first gold in the men’s 1000m time-trial defeating England’s Olympic champion Jason Queally in the process.
Queally said he did all he could to try and take the gold.
“This was my first 1000m in almost two years. The last one I did was at the world championships six weeks after the Olympics,” said Queally.
“But I did everything to go quickly, everything. I shaved my chest, my legs, you name it - I shaved it.”
The spoils were shared in the gymnastics all-around with England’s Kanukai Jackson taking the men’s title and Kate Richardson of Canada the women’s.
Richardson, 18, who suffered a back injury last year, had two vertebrae fused in January and was in a brace for six weeks after that.
“I couldn’t move — that was horrible,” she said.
“It felt really good to move again,” she said. “This is my first competition back, and it felt really good to be out there.”
The Mixed Team badminton meanwhile reached the semi-final stage with England upending Malaysia to set up a last four meeting Monday with Scotland, while Singapore edged Wales to go up against New Zealand.—AFP