Wellington, New Zealand quick Trent Boult revealed that his team’s inability to cross the line in the nail-biting ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019 final against England at Lord’s still hadn’t sunk in. Boult, who bowled both the final over and the Super Over of the tense World Cup final against England, admitted that the Blackcaps would take a long time to get over the defeat.
“It’s been a long flight home but it the defeat] probably hasn’t sunk in yet. I wish it would, so we can all get over it but it’s one of those things that we probably won’t get over for a long time,” he said. The New Zealand pace attack leader relived the final moments of the game and said he couldn’t help but ‘nitpick’ on things that the side could’ve done differently to alter the outcome of the game, which the side eventually lost on boundary count after scores were levelled in the match as well as the super over.
He thought back to the four overthrows, deflected off a diving Ben Stokes’ bat in the final over as well as the moment he realised he’d stepped on the boundary cushion in attempt to catch Stokes out a little earlier, an ICC report on Thursday said. “It’s natural to nitpick, to wonder about all those little things and how it could have been a totally different game. I’ve been living that last over in my mind a lot – somehow I got hit for six along the ground which has never happened before. To see the scores level after the Super Over and still lose, yeah, that was a pretty unique situation,” said Boult.
Speaking about the missed catch attempt, he said, “You can imagine the feeling when my left shoe hit the cushion and it was too late to throw the ball to Marty Guptill. There were probably 27,000 intoxicated Poms in there screaming as the ball went up, so I couldn’t hear anything Marty was saying.” New Zealand will look to forget about the loss as soon an possible, and Boult feels the upcoming tour of Sri Lanka will help the team get on with things, but acknowledged that the shock of the loss wouldn’t completely fade away even over the next couple of years.
“We’ve got a quick turnaround before we go to Sri Lanka in a couple of days’ time, and we’ll be back in the saddle. As I said, it’s not something that’s going to disappear over the next couple of days. It’s still going to be hard to swallow over the next couple of years,” he added.