Cricket: how England won the World Cup
It was a little after 8pm, on a glorious summer’s evening, when Eoin Morgan did what no England men’s cricket captain had done before, said Mike Atherton in The Times. “He lifted the World Cup.” No one – not the spectators at Lord’s, not the millions of people watching around the world – could quite “believe what they had just witnessed”. The final had been tied – not once, but twice. First England equalled New Zealand’s score of 241. Then there was a Super Over, in which each side faced six balls, to settle the match. England were first up: they hit 15 runs. Then came the Black Caps: they responded with 15. So, under the rules, the trophy went to the side that had hit more boundaries in the match – and that side was England. It was an extraordinary finale to what was, surely, the finest one-day match in history. Ties are exceedingly rare in cricket, said Sambit Bal on ESPN Cricinfo. Of the 445 World Cup matches that had been played before this final, just four had been tied. But two ties in two overs is another thing entirely. And that wasn’t even the strangest thing that happened, said Paul Newman in the Daily Mail. In the final over of the main game, Ben Stokes accidentally hit a ball twice. After clubbing it the first time, he raced back to complete a second run when New Zealand threw it towards his wicket – and it “cannoned off his outstretched bat”. The ball hit the boundary, so England were awarded six runs in total (although it turned out the umpires awarded one too many, a decision that may have swayed the match in England’s favour). What a “total fluke”.
Well, it was about time England had some luck, said Tanya Aldred in The Guardian. Their record at recent World Cups was woeful. At the previous six tournaments, they had failed to get beyond the quarter-finals. And the last one, in 2015, was the worst of them all: the team were knocked out before they had even played their final group match. England were so abject that the England and Wales Cricket Board had to take “drastic action”, said Simon Wilde in The Sunday Times. They hatched a four-year plan to transform the side. Their goal? Winning this World Cup. And they did it by making one-day internationals (ODIs) a priority. They hired a new head coach, Trevor Bayliss, whose speciality is white-ball cricket. They introduced dedicated contracts for white-ball specialists, ensuring they would be paid a salary for playing for England. But the driving force behind England’s transformation has been Morgan, said Paul Hayward in The Sunday Telegraph. A “virtual player-manager”, he is the one who got them playing the thrilling attacking cricket that has lit up the sport. No England captain in memory has had a greater influence.
It was in March that the final piece of England’s jigsaw fell into place, said Simon Hughes in The Sunday Times. That was when Jofra Archer, the Barbados-born fast bowler, became eligible to play for England, having lived in the country for three years. He only made his international debut in May, but he took 20 wickets at the World Cup and conceded just 4.57 runs an over – making him “as valuable as any bowler in the competition”. With his combination of “menacing hostility and total unflappability”, it was no surprise Morgan turned to him to bowl the Super Over. But the day belonged to Stokes, said Steve James in The Times. Throughout the tournament, he batted with “quite incredible judgement and composure”. And in the final, he was once again “both glue and dynamite”: his innings of 85 not out saved the side, but it confirmed that Stokes is not only a truly great allrounder, but “a cricketer of special character and temperament”.