Why do England only ever win finals by the skin of their teeth?
Got any fingernails left? Me neither. Nor any of the 7.5 million people who watched England’s ludicrously tense, scarcely believable victory over New Zealand in the Cricket World Cup final yesterday. It was sport at its finest: two world-class teams at their absolute limits playing out a breathless finale.
England are the only nation to have won the football, rugby and cricket world cups. Lord’s 2019 is now in the pantheon alongside Wembley 1966 and Sydney 2003. But it’s not just victory which links the three; it’s the way in which those victories were achieved. Each match went to extra time. Each match was won on the smallest of margins. And each match shredded the nerves of those watching.
In 1966, England’s football team were moments away from a 2-1 victory in normal time when Wolfgang Weber equalised for West Germany. “You’ve won it once,” manager Alf Ramsey told his shattered players. “Now go out and win it again.” In extra time, Geoff Hurst scored a goal whose legitimacy is questioned to this day, and then another one in the dying seconds which prompted the most famous piece of commentary in English sporting history: “They think it’s all over, it is now.”
In 2003, Elton Flatley was the Australian rugby team’s version of Weber, kicking a late penalty that took the match into an extra 20 minutes. The scores were level with 30 seconds left when the ball came back to Jonny Wilkinson, whose drop kick wobbled in the air as it went between the posts. It was the most beautiful thing any England rugby fan had ever seen.
And so to yesterday, probably the tensest of the lot. A tie in normal time left New Zealand needing two runs off the final ball of the deciding Super Over. For England, four years of preparation had come down
to this: the moment of truth where a team has it or doesn’t.
Jofra Archer, just 24 years old and less than three months into his career in international cricket, bowled an excellent yorker. Jason Roy swooped to pick up and throw. Jos Buttler broke the stumps with Martin Guptill short of the crease, and bedlam erupted all around the staid old home of cricket.
What is it with England? Why can’t we ever seem to win a world cup easily, dominating the opposition and cruising to victory with plenty in reserve?
Australia’s cricketers won three world cups on the bounce between 1999 and 2007 by wide margins. Two of the All Blacks’ three rugby world cup wins have been similarly emphatic. France’s footballers have triumphed in two world cup finals by an aggregate score of 7-2.
This is clearly not the English way. And perhaps it’s all the better for that. To find yourself enraptured by sport, scarcely able to breathe, catapulted in an instant from hope to despair, and in another instant back up to triumph, is a rare privilege. A match’s worth is not merely in the prize which lies at the end of it, but in the way the game itself pans out.
When England win global tournaments, they take us on a rollercoaster ride with them – and most of us would not have it any other way.
Typical finals in any sport are humdrum affairs, and few people remember them. But no one will ever forget yesterday at Lord’s, just as they will never forget 2003 or 1966, either. Next time England look like they might win a world cup, no matter the sport, remember this: fasten your seatbelts.