WHAT A FINISH!
On the 14th July at 1700 I had given up all hope for England.
By 1800 I was starting to realise something crazy was happening.
At about 1830 I started to Google the tie breaker rules.
By 1900 I was thinking that if England might just make it.
At 1930 England won the World Cup – and I had aged by several years.
New Zealand were magnificent and showed us true sportsmanship. I would not have minded them winning – but it would have been heart-breaking for the England players, as it ended up being for New Zealand. I have been saddened to see so much vitriol about the result on social media – and very little of it has come from New Zealand.
England did win the World Cup according to the competition regulations. Personally, I have no problems with the regulations of the tournament. I do not believe you can split The World Cup in two and share it so tie breaker rules are needed. I do not have a problem with the number of boundaries being used in the ‘tie breaker tie breaker’ scenario. If you are going to get picky about that then you can get equally picky about the fact New Zealand even made the final because of the Net Run Rate Rule – and I do not have a problem with this either. Pakistan were destroyed by West Indies and the scale of the defeat should be relevant. In my view, both India and Australia played more consistent good cricket than England and New Zealand – but not when it really mattered. And I am so glad it was England and New Zealand – otherwise we would never have had that amazing game. Whatever rules you have, someone will not like them.
And we have the question about the ‘6’ which came courtesy of the 4 overthrows – that rule needs to be changed. It is both unclear and completely crazy. Imagine if the run out rule applied from when ball was thrown rather than when the ball hits the stumps? No, that is crazy and I am not surprised it was missed by everyone in the ground! If you want to query that then you can query the wide that was given off Archer’s first ball in the super over – because it was not a wide. When you start to question things like that, you will never stop. The fact is that according to the rules of the competition, England Won. Let’s face it, at some point in the tournament both sides got lucky with Umpire Decisions.
When it comes to Test Match Cricket, I updated my heroes a few years ago – Strauss, Cook and Trott – after the 2010/11 Ashes Series in Australia. They took over from Gower and Botham.
However for most of my cricket following life, England have been rubbish at One Day Cricket and my heroes were still Gooch, Lamb and Botham from 1992 – even though they did not win. However, before The World Cup started, BBC Radio 5 Live attempted to pick an all-time England One Day team. I realised then that it was almost impossible to even fit Gooch and Botham into that team – and Gooch still remains the best England batsman of modern times (for me better than Kevin Pietersen). The all-time England One Day team is basically the current team. I think virtually every current first choice player would have got into any England side of the last 30 years.
So now I have 11 new heroes plus Moeen Ali. I have been so impressed with Ben Stokes – I know he had a terrible year or so but he has shown that you can turn things around in life – surely a good lesson. Don’t forget that you heard it here first (Ben Stokes Phase 2?).
Thanks for an amazing game and thanks to both sides for that last hour – I will always treasure the memory of watching that last hour with my 3 year old – who was gripped.
Cricketed 