The World Cup final was a celebration of cricket, revealing the possibilities of the 50-over game which was thought to be on its death bed. So England were lucky, we need to visit the rules afresh, and shouldn’t New Zealand have won for good behaviour and long-term consistency? Yes, but what does all that matter when the game brought so much joy and gave us what all sport hopes to provide: a nail-biting climax?
For a long time, it wasn’t a particularly good match. The Lord’s wicket was too slow and the occasion seemed to get to the performers. But the finish changed everything. A tie is exciting enough, but a double tie? The questions will remain, though. Were England given an extra run when a diving Ben Stokes inadvertently deflected an overthrow to the boundary? What was that strange rule about boundaries deciding a match? How could England have won when New Zealand didn’t lose?
Sport is not perfect. Often imperfection is the crack through which we see it at its best. After all, sport is, “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles,” as the philosopher Bernard Suits said, and the final was full of unnecessary obstacles.
Rules are arbitrary, so it is as valid to say the team with most boundaries wins as it is to say that the team which loses the fewer wickets does so. In the end, the best team took the title. Too much analysis and too many complaints will only extinguish the pleasure.
Diverse apporoaches
It may not be politically correct to say this, but New Zealand did not deserve to win the World Cup. They played a brand of cricket that was a throwback to the English style of old — overcautious, unadventurous, risk-averse. This, at a time when the format was in danger of being wiped out by T20, and the sport itself was struggling to attract new fans. Something was needed to provide the energy and flair that would revive it, and England delivered that in style. The accent was on attack — whether batting or bowling — and the approach attractive.
The essential difference between white ball cricket and the red is this: in the shorter formats, the result is everything, the ends justify the means. The longer format demands logic, style, and emphasis on the process as much as on the result. Only one question needs to be answered in white ball cricket about strategy, tactics, selection: did the team win? If it did then it was all brilliant. If it didn’t, it’s time to move on.
Good for the game
World Cup-winners tend to set the agenda. Had New Zealand won, it might have been a step back. England winning means that other teams might attempt to play like them, in a positive, sexy style that can only be good for the game.
New Zealand were the underdogs, they have been the best-behaved team in international cricket, and in Kane Williamson they had a gracious captain with a fine tactical brain. It was difficult not to love him and his team — I wrote here earlier how a New Zealand win would be something to look forward to. It is difficult not to sympathise with the team for the non-defeat that ended all dreams, and in the ideal world, the Cup might have been shared.
But sport abhors such fragmentation. Competition demands that there be one winner, and all games have rules for breaking the tie from penalty shootouts to (in the old days) bowl outs and Super Overs. It is not a perfect system, but it is there, no one had an issue with it before the tournament began when all teams approved.
The case of ‘extra run’
Former umpire Simon Taufel has said that England were given an extra run, six instead of five, when Stokes’s bat deflected the ball. A philosopher in a US University has countered that by saying the law is ambiguous thanks to a misplaced comma, and five runs was right. Interpretation is everything. The argument that England’s ‘extra run’ led to victory assumes that everything else would have remained exactly the same. But one variable can affect others too in real-life situations.
Tournament rules (framed by the International Cricket Council) and laws of the game (the preserve of the Marylebone Cricket Club) are not written in stone, they evolve. Before Duckworth-Lewis appeared and fans stopped complaining about results because they didn’t understand the rule, ODIs were decided in a variety of ways. We can get too mathematical about the Lord’s final, and forget the human drama and the spirit of the players involved. Ben Stokes, for one, deserves better.
The final will have greatness thrust upon it over the years as more people than the ground could possibly accommodate claim to have watched it live. It was unforgettable, even if Williamson might not echo Roger Federer’s words after his loss at Wimbledon a few kilometres and a few minutes away: “I shall try to forget.”
For the moment, that is enough.