How is any game of cricket decided on the number of boundaries hit? Let alone allowing a World Cup Final to be decided by such a method? Weeks before the start of the tournament myself and others discussed the rules that had been put in place. Rules such as no spare days for preliminary games in the case of rain which we knew would come back to bite some team hard, and that if the Final was washed out both teams would share the trophy. I can assure you we all read those rules, and when we came across the rule that allowed the final to be decided by the number of boundaries hit in the match if it had first finished in a tie, and then remained a tie after the super over, our reaction was exactly this - “there’s no way this will ever happen, but can you imagine what a shit result that would be if it ever did happen?!” So, if we had thought then that it was a rubbish rule, how was it allowed to be a part of the playing conditions? How did anyone who created those rules think that that would be a fair way to decide a six week tournament? Did they actually think about how it would feel to lose a World Cup final under those circumstances? Did they put themselves in that position and think ‘hmmm, no this would not work’? Obviously, not.
The Soccer World Cup does not award the trophy to the team that concedes the least number of corners. The Rugby Union World Cup does not award the trophy to the team that scores the most tries. Wimbledon was not decided by the least number of double faults served. Until recent times rugby league and Australian rules had full replays if scores were level at full time. Major League baseball continues to play until there is a winner, one game in last year’s World Series going to the 18th innings.
Everyone knew the rules going into the game, and going into that final ball of the Super Over. The knowledge of the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ was genuine as a result. In many ways it is the same feeling that South Africa felt in the tied semi-final in 1999 – they hadn’t lost the game, but they would not be playing in the final. The rules were known at that time, so there was no doubt as to who would be progressing. Lessons are supposed to be learned from such instances. 20 years on and once again a team that has not been beaten on the park was left labelled as the ‘losing’ team. The lack of foresight lays at the feet of the ICC, and although one country and its supporters will always see this as a great day for cricket – in the same way one country still does from 1999 – the rest of the world will see it as a deflating and slightly unfair result.
Umpiring decisions will always haunt matches that finish so close as this final did, and one sticks out from this game that may not have changed the final result but would certainly have changed how it played out. The whole fiasco surrounding the ball ricocheting from Ben Stokes bat in attempting to reach his ground and flying to the boundary is another instance where the laws of the game have become slightly obsolete. To be honest, trying to decipher the law to decide whether or not 5 runs or 6 six runs should have been awarded is not where the problem lies. No doubt it was the immediate problem, because the fate of one run could well have changed the result of the match. It is quite probable that, instead of changing the result to a victory for New Zealand by one run as many pundits have suggested, it could well have resulted in an outright victory for England. Needing two runs from the final ball, Stokes received a juicy full toss from Trent Boult which he tried to bunt into the gap for two, which resulted in only a single before the run out was performed to leave scores level. If England had required three runs, Stokes would likely have put the ball over the fence such was the trajectory it was bowled at.
No, trying to justify the awarding of 5 or 6 runs is not where I see the problem. The problem is simply this – if the ball had not gone to the boundary, the batsmen would have refused to run any extra runs, because since time immemorial batsmen have almost always refused to take extra runs after a ball has ricocheted off their body or their bat in attempting to make their ground. It has become convention to do so, even though it is completely within the laws of the game to do so. It would have been more interesting to see what would have happened had the ball not made the boundary. Would Stokes have called through for extra runs, given that it was a World Cup final on the line, knowing full well that even though it was in the laws of the game it would have contravened a convention that has been followed for decades by batsmen? Whatever he did in that situation he would have been castigated for.
What should be done is to take that law out of the game completely. Change it so that if a ball is thrown and hits the batsman or his equipment, then no further runs can be taken. Surely it makes sense in this day and age, when the cricketers themselves never take advantage of the law, to just simply take it out of the book. If this had been the case on Sunday, then England would have been awarded the two runs that they took, and then the ball deemed as dead when it went from Stokes’ bat to the boundary. Stokes did nothing wrong in this instance, but it feels like a piece of undeserved luck for England to have received those extra runs. Change that law now and be done with it.
England seemed to have most of the luck through the game, but they still needed 15 runs from the final over, and there’s no doubt New Zealand should have been able to avoid losing from that point. I am in agreement that this is a piss poor way to decide a major tournament winner, and that never again should this be allowed to happen - but when New Zealand look back on the last four overs, when England needed 39 runs, they will know they should have won from that point.
On the bright side – surely England cannot win two trophies in one summer. Let's hope the Ashes is a great cricket contest with the right winner. In fact, we’ll take a tied series if you like England... that means we’ll retain them. Let's see how much you would enjoy that tied result.
No comments:
Post a Comment