A glorious day for English cricket

Wonderful, magnificent, utterly astonishing, and the best day for English cricket and – one hopes – for cricket in England since the 2005 Ashes. England deserved to win the World Cup because they recovered from a seemingly desperate position in the league stage of the tournament, and played magnificently in the three matches which took them to the final. Then Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler thoroughly deserved to win because they kept their nerve and batted with great skill when it seemed as if the match and the Cup were both slipping out of England’s hands.

But, while sport and cricket matches of this quality and intensity can be exhilarating and nerve-rackingly brilliant, they are also cruel. England deserved to win the World Cup, but nobody could honestly say that New Zealand deserved to lose the final; Eoin Morgan, even in the moment of victory, said that they had been the better team on the day.

And what a day it was, starting grey and chilly and ending in glorious sunshine. New Zealand’s innings was a struggle, as it often is. At one point it looked as if they might not reach 200. It took a gritty partnership of 46 between two admirable and underrated cricketers, Tom Latham and Colin de Grandhomme, to get them up to a defensible score. But surely, one thought between innings, 241 wouldn’t be enough even on a wicket offering bowlers a little help – not with the way England have been batting.

Any complacency was soon shattered. Trent Boult’s first ball, swinging in late, struck Jason Roy on the pad. “LBW”, I thought. “Not out”, said umpire Handunnettige Dharmasena. New Zealand reviewed. “Ball-tracking” showed a little less than half the ball hitting the leg-stump. “Umpire’s call”. Roy survived. He wouldn’t have done so if “Umpire’s call” had gone the other way.

Roy and Jonny Bairstow each struck some fine boundaries – not quite nerve-settling because neither was at ease against beautiful bowling from Bolt and Matt Henry. Then Roy went, caught behind off Henry. No worries; here comes Joe Root, the man around whom England so often build an innings. But for once Root seemed out of sorts. He couldn’t time the ball. He couldn’t pick up singles by finding gaps in the field as he usually does. He lost patience, made a wild swipe at de Grandhomme’s gentle medium-pacers and missed. Next ball he drove hard at a wide one and edged it to Tom Latham behind the stumps. Things were not looking good, and de Grandhomme was bowling with admirable economy.

Still Bairstow was in the 30s now. Then he wafted at a ball outside the off-stump, got an inside edge and was bowled. Captain Morgan wasn’t comfortable either. He cut at a high-bouncing ball from Jimmy Neesom. It soared into the air. Lockie Ferguson at deep point ran fifteen, twenty, perhaps more, yards in, flung himself forward and caught the ball inches from the ground, a magnificent catch even in the context of so many extraordinary catches in this World Cup.

England were 86 for 4, still 156 runs short of victory, a victory that was now looking less likely, to put it mildly. Were many, with long memories of disappointment, muttering “same old England”? Undoubtedly.

But “Take Courage”, as the beer advertisement used to say. Here, to join the indomitable Ben Stokes comes Jos Buttler, genius of One-Day and T20 cricket. Apart from an early hundred, the genius had made no great mark on the World Cup, partly because he had scarcely been needed, thanks to the magnificence of Roy, Bairstow and Root.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man? Absolutely. From the first ball he looked at ease as no other batsman had. Stokes meanwhile was struggling to time the ball or find the gaps – just like everyone else. But he soldiered on, playing – against his natural instincts – the poor bloody infantry to Buttler’s cavalier cavalry. The sun came out. The mood lightened. Stokes gained assurance to match his sense of responsibility. Buttler played a couple of his audacious scoop-flick over the shoulder shots. The runs came. The gap narrowed.  Only 46 needed in 5 overs and two balls – child’s play for these two heroes? Surely they would see England home.

The Director of this marvellous drama – “The President of the Immortals”, as Thomas Hardy would have put it – thought otherwise. Buttler drove at a wide-ish ball from Ferguson and failed to middle it. It swirled high in the air. A fielder ran hard in from the deep and made a glorious catch as he fell forward. The fielder was a substitute, Tim Southee. I’ve no idea who he was on for, but “how appropriate,” I thought even then, “if this catch secures the cup for New Zealand”, for Southee, a magnificent cricketer who has been the spearhead of their attack for ten years, has scarcely been needed in this tournament.

Now, 46 required in 5 overs and 1 ball, it was all up to Stokes. Others might strike a good blow or two – and Liam Plunkett would indeed do just that –but, if Stokes made a mistake, if Stokes got out, it was curtains for England. Four years of planning, four years of success, would have ended in failure. What a burden to carry!

Woakes went, Plunkett went, Archer went, but Stokes didn’t. He was there, facing Boult as the last over began. 15 needed off 6 balls. Ridiculous. He hit the first two balls to fielders in the deep, and didn’t run. He wasn’t going to be trapped at the bowler’s end.  He smote a six over mid-wicket. 9 needed from 3. Then came an extraordinary piece of fortune – further proof that the Gods of cricket were smiling on England and not on New Zealand.

Stokes drove deep towards long-on. Two runs but he had to dive to avoid the risk of being run-out, and as he did so Martin Guptill’s throw struck his bat and the ball sped towards the boundary. The convention is that when such a thing happens the batsmen don’t attempt another run. Stokes and Rashid observed the convention, but the ball crossed the boundary, and the umpires equally observed the law. Four runs were added to the two already run. 3 now needed from 2. Stokes, perhaps appropriately in the circumstances couldn’t find the boundary again. Each ball he tried for a 2; each time his partner, first Rashid and then Wood, was run out at the bowler’s end trying to complete the second run. The scores were level the match tied. Marvellous.

So to the innovation borrowed from T20: the Super Over: Stokes and Buttler (again) for England against Boult, Guptill and Neesom against Archer. Astonishingly another tie, 15 runs a-piece, with Guptill run out – of course – going for the win on the last ball.

Then, according to regulations which I would guess almost none of us knew about till we learned of them before the Super Overs, England won the World Cup because they had hit more boundaries on the day than New Zealand had. Cruel for the Kiwis.

Thus ended a wonderful match. I would agree with Vic Marks of Somerset and England that it was one which “no sane cricket fan in the ground could conclude that New Zealand deserved to lose” while insisting that this was a World Cup which England certainly deserved to win.

One especially pleasing thing is that everyone who has played in the tournament has at one time or another contributed to this success. It’s been a team carrying no passengers, and, as far as one can judge from outside, a peculiarly happy Band of Brothers. Much of the credit for that must also go to the coaching team, but particularly of course to the calm, apparently unflappable, captain, Eoin Morgan, now surely the most popular Irishman in England.

Afterwards the former New Zealand captain, Jeremy Coney, an astute and judicious commentator these days, suggested that deciding the result on the number of boundaries scored was a rotten way to settle the issue. I agree, for there is a better one: if both the 50 overs a side and the Super Over end in a tie, then the side that has taken more wickets should be declared the winner.

That, of course, would have given the Cup to New Zealand, which would have made it impossible for me to write such a joyous account of this remarkable match. Nevertheless, a thought for the future.

Some immediately declared that it was the greatest cricket match ever played; I think an exuberant Andrew Strauss was among them. Given his role in the changing of England’s One-Day cricket culture, his judgement is understandable – though he played in some pretty great ones himself. Of course there is something absurd in calling any match the greatest ever. Still, since the question has been raised, I would ask: “Greater than the tied Test between Australia and the West Indies at Brisbane in 1960, a match also distinguished by wonderful centuries from Gary Sobers and Norman O’Neill?”

Or: greater than The Oval Test of 1902? England, chasing 263 to beat Australia were 48 for 5 when Gilbert Jessop came out to bat and hit a hundred in 75 minutes. Even so England still needed 15 to win when the young number 11 Wilfred Rhodes emerged from the pavillion to join his Yorkshire colleague, George Hirst, “We’ll get them in singles, Wilfred,” Hirst reputedly said, though this has been denied. Get them they did however. I think it was at this match that a spectator, gripped by tension, bit through the handle of his umbrella. (Did anyone bite through their mobile phone at Lord’s yesterday?)

No need to proclaim it the greatest; enough to say it was magnificent and must be good for cricket. Now we need only – only! – an Ashes series, full of glorious cricket, the splendid sportsmanship displayed by all players on both teams yesterday and close finishes, to make cricket again what it used to be: not only one of our finest sports (which indeed it already is and always has been ), but also one of our most popular, which, sadly, it hasn’t been for a long time.