Five bonkers moments from the 2019 Cricket World Cup final – but which was the most uniquely cricket?

1. Everyone can stop talking about cricket now. Cricket is our thing. Get back to your association football or Love Island or whatever it is you do.

   1. It’s all right Sam, they’ll get caught up in The Hundred, with its flashy advertising and free-to-air-television-availability, and those of us who are real fans can go back to feverishly refreshing Denmark vs Finland and/or Lancashire 2nd Xl v Warwickshire 2nd XI live scorecards on Cricinfo.

      The conversations in the office today were fun though:

      Person A: “Did you see the cricket, amazing wasn’t it?”
      Person B: “Why, what happened?”
      Person A: “I don’t know”

      1. Warwickshire 2nd XI would smash the Lankies.

      2. Denmark v Finland was tighter than it should have been. Have the horrible feeling this is representative of Denmark going backwards more than it does Finland going forwards… Germany is probably the number 2 continental European side now after the Netherlands. Discuss.

2. Very funny, KC. Top stuff.

   You’re right, the fact that the ECB are doing away with 50-over cricket precisely now is the most belief-beggaring thing of all. But then, how much more British could one get? If the UK is characterised by one quality (never mind our “sense of justice”, which in practice is entirely based on whether or not the powers that be think you are someone who deserves justice), it is surely our administrators’ absolutely unfailing ability to get decisions completely wrong – and then forever after insist they were completely right

   1. Thanks Dane.

3. Given that the World Cup ended up being a reward for being better at something like ‘The Hundred,’ it’s probably appropriate that England drop 50-over cricket in favour of 100-ball cricket. It’s the only way they’ll win the World Cup, after all.

4. Brilliant as usual but then I guess you could write anything about this match and I would still think it was brilliant. I’m still buzzing. I can’t imagine how the players are feeling. Perhaps that’s why they agreed to meet the PM – they needed a bit of a come down.

   Anyway, one thing to add to your report. The most ridiculous thing about the Boult catch/six was that he had absolutely loads of time to chuck it to Guptill but he waited until it was too late.

   1. Thanks Dave.

5. I enjoyed this post immensely, KC. Are we on the brink of nostalgia? If Stanley Baldwin was a little less fey and wafty he would have included your first paragraph in his lofty prelapsarian speech in 1926. In the first draft of his poem Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote, ‘Witness the end of the 2019 World Cup Final, people! Look upon the chaos and know that it was beautiful and good!’ He scrubbed it out and changed it to, ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ What a fool he was.

   1. Thanks Edwardian

      1. I watched it with my mum, a relatively casual cricket observer. I had to do a lot of explaining. I enjoyed the analysis of “what’s more important right now, runs or wickets” and I feel that if Trent Boult had managed to keep that analysis running through his head as well as all the millions of other things he would have been better placed to perform a split-second risk-assessment under extreme situational pressure and patted that ball to Guptill instead of bothering with a catch.

      2. Could be.

      3. A very good point, Miriam.

         I had a similar thought about the Guptil throw that led to the four overthrows.

         But I had that thought several hours after the match had finished, with the benefit of hindsight as well as deep think. None of that is available to the players in the heat of battle.

         In these instances, it was split-second decision making under the most intense pressure sport can provide.

         The thing that impressed me with the extended high pressure denouement of this match is that no player made a mega gaff or seemed to have a total brain fade of the Klusener/Donald variety.

         Incredibly professional, both teams. Also extremely dignified in victory and defeat.

      4. Also worth saying that had Boult’s catch proven legit, that could well have sealed it. We’d say there was still a high run value to that particular wicket, even at that point.

6. Hey everyone, do yourselves a favour and watch this

   https://twitter.com/icc/status/1150835550053683202?s=21

   1. Brilliant. Not sure what’s better: the video or the replies.

7. And and and… the super over is a uniquely cricket tie breaker because it’s statistically (maths and stuff) massively more likely to end in a tie than the actual game.

   1. That’s true! Ha!

   2. This is an outstanding fact.

      1. They should have progressed to a Super Ball.

8. I only watched the last few overs because I knew England had lost, wouldn’t have watched otherwise.
   Did any one notice the last three English batsmen were all out whilst facing 1 ball between them?

9. England winning something was uniquely un-cricket.

   The Boult catch was the cricketest moment.

10. Thanks for bringing this back, KC.

    Just to tie it in to the last post, I read the other day that James Vince’s big contribution in that final (apart from being a sub-fielder during the Super Over) was bringing a drink out to Ben Stokes before the last ball of normal time and telling him England needed one to win instead of two. Good thing he was counting properly when he got his hundred the other day.

    It’s not particularly uniquely cricket, but it does feel quite James Vince.

    1. It does sum up how cricket this match was: that it was so confusing the players involved needed assistance to find out how the match could be won. Wonderful stuff.

11. After thwonking 177* off 169 balls against Ireland, Janneman Nieuwoudt Malan now has an ODI average of 120.8 (2 centuries and 2 fifties) from his seven games for South Africa. His List A average, from 62 matches, is 50.9.

    Dawid Johannes Malan (born in Roehampton, grew up in South Africa) is also quite good at cricket.

    I have decided my incompetence in the sport is due to not growing up in South Africa and having the wrong surname.

12. Also in the Ireland-South Africa match, Lizaad Buyron Williams took a wicket with the first ball in his ODI career which was nice (except for Andy McBrine, who was caught by de Kock) and I felt like his parents should get some kind of prize for bestowing his excellent name. Every single google hit for “Lizaad” seems to be for him. Given that he was born in 1993 that’s some really far-sighted Search Engine Optimisation right there. Sadly, in the process of this preliminary research, I discovered that his mother died a few years ago. Incidentally her name was “Lizette” so there’s definitely more story to his name that I haven’t been able to discover yet 🙁

    Simi Singh’s 100* broke the record for top score batting at number 8 or below in ODIs, beating the 95* shared between Chris Woakes (in the tied – ties, remember them? somewhat relevant to the nominal topic of this post, at least! – first ODI vs Sri Lanka at Trent Bridge in their 2016 tour) and Sam Curran (in the final and series-deciding ODI at Pune during this winter’s tour of India, which England lost by 7 runs).

    I noticed Simi Singh holds another record as the only Irishman to have scored a half-century and taken five wickets in the same ODI, achieved this January when they thrashed the UAE by 112 runs in Abu Dhabi – the final match of their Covid-afflicted ODI series, and which Ireland needed to win to prevent UAE taking an unlikely series victory. When I say “they” thrashed UAE, it was almost single-handedly Singh with his 54* off 57 balls at number 7 and Curtis Campher’s 56 off 72 being their only half-centuries, and Singh taking out the entire UAE top five (which must be a rare occurrence in itself but I can’t find any stats for how unusual it is) en route to a remarkable 10-4-10-5. The economy of 1 run per over exactly is pretty cool too.

    The Kingdom’s many fans of Paul Collingwood may fondly recall that he’s the only England player to have taken a five-for and scored a century in an ODI. That was 112* and 6/31 vs Bangladesh at Trent Bridge in the 2005 pre-Ashes Aus-Ban-Eng NatWest tri-series – Bangladesh came into the match fresh off that famous win over Australia at Cardiff when a less-than-fresh Symonds was relegated to drinks duty.

    Only two other Englishmen have emulated Simi Singh’s feat of a fifer’n’fifty in an ODI. Have a guess before you look it up, they’re two smashing names, but if you can’t recall their heroic performances, you’d probably not have guessed them! https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/records/282798.html

13. Right, seems it’s not an anniversary and it’s ages ago now and sit’s since been conclusively proved that only test cricket matters anyway, it is time for the official* NZ reaction :

    It was a fucking shit way to lose a World Cup final.

    That said, had NZ won in the same circumstances I (officially* on behalf of NZ) would have taken it, no worries. Perhaps I would have spared a thought for how England fans might be feeling, but perhaps I would have been too busy rolling around on the floor of my lounge in ecstasy to give a shit. Perhaps I’d still be there now (covered in lint).

    So, on behalf of New Zealand*, congratulations England (pass it on to England, please someone).

    *Unofficially

    1. I passed it on, but England was too busy weeping into its pint glass about something not… coming… home maybe? I don’t know, it looked like England would lamp me one if I pressed the issue, so I didn’t.

       1. OK. Ta. Probably crying about the plumber not coming home to fix the bog because he was told to go back home because of that Breakfast thingi.

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