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ICC World Cup 2019: Ten bizarre things that happened in the final

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Roar Rookie
15th July, 2019
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It’s been a few hours since the old Murphy’s Law was seen in full action, leaving 4.784 million Kiwis and various supporters of the Mr Nice Guys still admittedly stunned.

The feeling for an average Kiwi is merely difficult to understand. It’s not frustration, not anger and not even disappointment. Yes, there is a little bit of those, but the inner voice of the typical Kiwi is constantly chirping at their conscience, saying: “That really sucks.”

And every Kiwi is thinking, if one more thing went their way, they would’ve been the ones jumping around the ground with their maiden World Cup.

They would’ve been the ones giving the interviews while the English players went indoors to hide their faces.

The headlines would read: “The underdogs topple choking favourites,” or “England face their worse fears on a tough batting pitch.” But it wasn’t to be.

It was Eoin Morgan whose hands were wrapped around cricket’s ultimate’s trophy. It was Jofra Archer dazzling in the limelight. And it was Ben Stokes who ended up on the right side for once.

New Zealand, after the post-match presentation, were nowhere to be seen. They lost in the most painful of manners – like facing a slow death – the contest slipping out of their hands by piece after piece of bad luck.

Here are ten bizarre things that happened during arguably the most magnificent World Cup final ever.

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1) First ball umpires call
New Zealand didn’t quite dazzle with the bat, but somehow managed to scrape through to 241. All eyes were on that man, Trent Boult. If he could prize out a couple of early wickets on what looked a tough batting surface, New Zealand would have believed.

Boult charged in from over the wicket, bowling the perfect left-armer’s inswinger to the right-handed Jason Roy. The batsman had no clue about what was coming and played all around it, prompting New Zealand’s raucous first-ball appeal, which umpire Marais Erasmus denied.

As it turned out, it was an Umpires call. Had Marais Erasmus given it out, who knows what could have happened?

2) Ross Taylor’s wicket
​That man Martin Guptill found himself in another tangle of lucklessness, after he unsuccessfully used up New Zealand’s review before Taylor was given out.

Looking to work Mark Wood’s ball off his pads into the leg side, Taylor completely missed and Marais Erasmus was convinced he was out. As it turned out, the ball struck above the knee-roll, and as most TV commentators thought, the ball was flying over the leg stump by quite a margin.

Who knows what New Zealand could’ve done with Taylor’s experience in the middle? The stalwarts departure after Kane Williamson meant that there was no experience to guide Tom Latham and James Neesham through to the death, perhaps costing them a few runs too.

Just maybe, New Zealand were guilty of leaving the hitting for a little too late just like they did against India, and boy did it nearly just come off.

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3) Matt Henry’s jaffas
​When a bowler is beating a batsman every second ball, you stand up and applaud him. But he has unfortunately not completed his job until he takes a wicket.

It would be an understatement to say that Matt Henry’s opening spell was sensational.

Jason Roy was feeling the nerves of the occasion, poking and prodding for balls in the fourth stump channel. Such was the discipline with which Henry operated; one couldn’t be faulted for thinking that this was a Test match on a green grassy track at Lord’s.

Every ball that jagged off the seam was accompanied by loud ooh’s and aahs from a packed stadium. But Matt Henry couldn’t do what New Zealand needed so desperately: take a wicket!

So good were his balls, that they were beating anything and everything they were going past. Even his partner Trent Boult was looking ordinary. If only Henry could have given New Zealand a few wickets a little earlier. 10-2, 20-3, and the final might have finished then and there.

4) Colin de Grandhomme’s unlikely day out with the ball
When people were discussing this final, they were talking about the swing of Trent Boult, or the accuracy of Mitch Santner, or the pace of Lockie Ferguson.

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But who would have thought that Colin de Grandhomme would bowl 10 overs for 25 runs, even taking a wicket, with his dibby-dobbly medium pace?

On a slowish pitch with boundaries sized enough to make it hard for batsman, Colin de Grandhomme’s accuracy was naggy, and the lack of pace made him hard to get away. Perhaps taking 6 wickets in 10 games has meant that Colin de Grandhomme has escaped under the radar to an extent.

The critical statistic though is the fact that the medium-pacer has the lowest economy rate of 4.15 for any New Zealand bowler in the World Cup.

5) Mitch Santner’s inexplicable duck
No matter what level of cricket, which country or which tournament you play in, one thing is understood by everyone.

On the last ball of the batting innings – no matter how many wickets you have left – you simply swing for the ropes. This is why Mitch Santner left all the commentators baffled when he ducked under Jofra Archer’s slower bouncer, which was the final ball of New Zealand’s batting innings.

Looking at how close this game panned out in retrospect, it is moments like these that could have made all the difference.

What exactly Santner was thinking, no one will ever know. Perhaps he was too confident in New Zealand’s ability to defend 241. Maybe he was being troubled by the pace and steep bounce of Jofra Archer.

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Whatever it was, we will never know what the result of the World Cup would have been, had he even taken the bye.

6) Guptill’s throw from the deep
​Martin Guptill can stake a claim to produce two of the most memorable pieces of outbuilding in the tournament. After a dismal run-up to the semi-finals with his batting, Martin Guptill virtually redeemed himself with that sensational direct hit to run out MS Dhoni, who was threatening to take Lord’s away from New Zealand.

And if that throw was the reason New Zealand were in the final, another throw from Guptill can easily be deemed as the reason New Zealand lost. On the fourth ball of the last over with England chasing an unlikely 9 off 3 deliveries, Guptill’s throw deflected off Ben Stokes’ bat and rolled away to the fence, converting 2 runs to 6 runs.

The game was tied, England got the super over, and England won the World Cup. As much as Guptill has no reason to be disappointed considering that he faced some punishing bad luck, this memory will undoubtedly haunt him and New Zealand for years to come.

Martin Guptill post-game

Martin Guptill after his semi final throwdown (Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images)

7) Boult’s could-have-been sensational catch
With 22 needed off 9 balls, Stokes was arguably the only man standing between New Zealand and the elusive World Cup trophy.

On the fourth delivery of the penultimate over, Stokes launched one towards the midwicket boundary, where it looked as though Trent Boult pulled off a sensational catch as he did against the West Indies.

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Losing balance falling over the boundary, he seemed to have successfully relayed the ball to Guptill. But as it happened, Boult had stepped on the advertisement boards on the boundary, and Stokes got 6 runs instead.

The man would stay on to get England to the tie. Had this been out, England would have been 9 down needing 22 off 8 balls, with only Jofra Archer and Mark Wood at the crease. New Zealand would in most likeliness been world champions. But cricket is truly a game of fine margins, and a millimetre was the distance between New Zealand and the World Cup trophy.

8) Guptill for the Super Over
One of the most baffling decisions made by Williamson, who had an otherwise spectacular tournament as captain, was to send an out of form and out of confidence Martin Guptill to get 16 off 6 deliveries.

While Guptill got to face only one delivery – the last one – which anyone couldn’t do much about, someone like Latham or de Grandhomme would have been a better option.

de Granhomme was admittedly not middling the ball, but neither was Guptill. And if the experience was what New Zealand were after, then why didn’t Williamson send himself out there? Was there too much pressure for him to handle, or was he unwilling to look selfish?

For a batsman who has been middling the ball all tournament, one-handedly carrying the team’s batting unit, the captain should have come down to bat. It would have been especially jittery for Guptill, who would have undoubtedly been disturbed after that overthrow that virtually cost New Zealand the game.

New Zealand skipper Kane Williamson.

New Zealand skipper Kane Williamson took the crushing World Cup final loss with immense grace. (Photo by Action Foto Sport/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

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9) Jofra Archer bowling the Super Over
As England were playing their final few balls in their Super Over, a 24-year-old emerged out of the balcony and began warming up on the side of the pitch.

The members of the MCC stood with their eyes transfixed, almost in disbelief. The fate of English cricket now rested in the hands of a man who only recently became fully English.

The decision to put such a young man under tremendous pressure in a World Cup final was quite brutal, and nearly backfired for England.

It wasn’t as if Archer’s bowling performance in this particular match was exclusively exceptional. Wood was sensational and Plunkett was impactful too. The decision to thus got with Archer was a huge gamble.

The first ball of his over was a wide, and on the third, Neesham even hoicked a six over the leg-side. Had New Zealand won the Super Over, Morgan and the England management would have been under immense scrutiny with this rather shocking decision.

But it seems as if it was meant to be for the man. In another cryptic tweet he published on the fifth July 2015, at 12:09 AM, the then 20-year-old said, “Wouldn’t mind a super over.”

10) The tied Super Over decided on boundaries
It’s quite ironic that what won the World Cup for England in the end was the crux of their four-year transformation; the end of accumulation cricket and the start of boom-boom-bash.

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New Zealand would feel that they got hard done by because in many ways, this rule fails to acknowledge the beauty of risk-free batting. Imagine if India was in this situation.

The beauty of the Indian side lies in their ability to score runs without hitting boundaries, and this rule by the ICC indirectly says that this approach is inferior to boundary hitting.

What New Zealand would’ve loved was the number of wickets taken to also be factored into deciding this tied Super Over.

New Zealand managed to take all 10 whereas England took only 8. In many ways, this rule is a clear enunciation of the fact that batting is out-favoured over bowling in this game.

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