Morgan hails ‘superhuman’ match-winner
Stokes carried the team, says stunned captain Archer given super-over advice from all-rounder
CRICKET NEWS CORRESPONDENT Eoin Morgan described Ben Stokes’s match-winning performance as “superhuman” and hopes his team’s stunning World Cup victory has inspired a new generation to fall in love with cricket.
Morgan acknowledged his life would change for ever, now he is a World Cup-winning captain, but did not want to be drawn on his immediate future. At the age of 32, he will have a decision to make “when the dust has settled”, after this win. He will have to decide whether he wants to carry on and lead England at the World Twenty20 in Australia, in October next year. If not, it could be time for Jos Buttler, his deputy, to step up.
“The next World Cup is four years away and four years is a long time,” he said. “The question is, will I be in the team then, will I be good enough? Will I be able to keep up?”
That is for the future. Morgan looked stunned by his team’s superover victory and could not quite believe he was sitting at his postmatch press conference with the World Cup trophy next to him.
“I still can’t quite believe that we have got over the line. It has been an extraordinary day,” he said. “It was the most incredible game of cricket. There was nothing between the sides. Sport sometimes is about very fine margins and this was the finest of margins and it could have gone either way. Thankfully it went our way. It has been phenomenal people believed because we believed.”
Stokes was named man of the match for his unbeaten 84 which dragged England to a tied score with New Zealand, before he went out and helped Buttler put on 15 in the super over. He put to bed his final-over meltdown in the World Twenty20 final three years ago when he was hit for four sixes and England lost in agonising circumstances to West Indies.
His scrapes with the law dragged down the reputation of English cricket last year, but he restored it in the most dramatic fashion and at just the right time, with this game the first to be shown on free-to-air television for 14 years.
“To come through is extraordinary. It was almost superhuman from him,” Morgan said of Stokes. “He has really carried the team. His partnership with Jos was extraordinary, but to bat with the lower order the way he did was incredible. The emotion going through the whole game he handled in an incredibly experienced way.
“I hope this has inspired people, particularly given the timing it finished. Sunday evening you normally settle in for a bit of David Attenborough or some random film, but I hope they were tuned in to the cricket.”
A tearful Stokes embraced each of his team-mates at the end. He said there will never “be a better game of cricket” than this World Cup final win.
“I just tried to take it as deep as I possibly could. I came to realise the longer I could stay in, the more pressure they’d be under,” he said.
“These are the situations where fitness levels really pay off, putting the extra yards in. It’s an amazing group to be part of, this team is incredible, with the things we’ve been through together. There’s not a group that deserves it more than this. The last four years, this is what we’ve worked for. This is where we aspired to be, and we’ve managed to come here and do it – in such a good game, I don’t think there will ever be a better game of cricket.”
As England prepared to defend 15 in the super over, Morgan called his players together for a brief team talk in the middle of Lord’s as 30,000 people bit their nails.
“I just encouraged them to smile, laugh and enjoy it because it was such a ridiculous situation,” he said. “There was a lot of pressure in that moment of the day. The fact it got to a super over and we had to defend was a matter of putting smiles on people’s faces to release tension. To play in a Super over at the end of a draining day takes a huge amount of effort. We reminded calm, but we were very nervous.”
Jofra Archer is England’s death bowler because of his pace, yorkers and variations. But he is only 24. This was just his 14th one-day international. Before he bowled his first ball Stokes gave him some advice, remembering his own World Twenty20 nightmare. “Stokesy told me, ‘Win or lose, today will not define me as a player’,” Archer said. “The boys did so well to give us 15, I am so grateful they gave us the opportunity to compete.”