The cricket!

Aah, the cricket. That was good, wasn’t it?

I’ll confess, after the first loss to Australia, I wrote a forlorn load of words about all the small details which meant this four-year project had been blown at the final hurdle. I am very much he of little faith.

I remained so to the very end – moaning to myself about the little things that I thought should be different … I thought Stokes was batting too slowly, I thought Rashid should have gone in above Archer, I thought Stokes shouldn’t bat the super over, I thought Archer shouldn’t bowl the super over, I thought Roy shouldn’t have been at deep midwicket, I thought Archer should have bowled more short balls in the super over, I thought, I thought, I thought … and who cares …

Though, maybe, even though I was wrong, I was a bit right. You know, it’s funny to think if Stokes had been caught on the boundary by Boult/Guptill, as he really should have been, his innings would be looked at as a fatally flawed contribution, a Dhoni-like overinvestment in his own finishing abilities. But it wasn’t, and he’s the hero, and I love him, and Archer’s the hero and I love him, and Roy’s the hero, and I love him, and Morgan’s the master-tactician and I love him. I love them all.

As soon as England had turned near-disaster round with their superb wins against India and NZ in the group stage, you could tentatively say the 4-year project was worthwhile to an extent; now of course you can say it’s a wholly justified triumph.

So, everyone involved should be lauded to the hilt. The key thing to remember is not just how bad England were in the 2015 World Cup, but how little cricket fans cared. In England, we’d always held ODIs in substantially lower regard than tests. I was a bit baffled by just how much the 2011 World Cup meant to Indian cricket. Now I’m not. Now I get it.

What Strauss, Morgan, Bayliss et al managed to do was transform the whole atmosphere and mindset of English one-day cricket. It became important, and it became ebullient and joyful. Winning this World Cup does indeed feel as important as winning the Ashes. If England lose the Ashes, it will still be remembered as a glorious summer.

Paul Farbrace, the former assistant coach, is an underrated figure in this, a beacon of positivity and good faith. And it was lovely, in this tournament, to hear Farbrace pinpointing the moment of transformation to an ODI in 2015 (fittingly against New Zealand) when England were pootling along in the usual old way and then Adil Rashid came in down the order and whacked one of the New Zealand pacers back over his head for six and the coaching team saw, and fully committed to, the way forward.

Rashid is the main protagonist in my own story of England’s glory. Odd perhaps, considering he was, hampered by a shoulder injury, well below his best in this World Cup, and his contribution to the final was a solid but unspectacular 8 overs 0 for 39, and a heroically spectacularly unselfish 0, run out off 0 balls.

But he is one of the core of players who were there through it all – the line-up in the 2019 final is impressively similar to that in those 2015 matches – Roy, Morgan, Root, Stokes, Buttler, Bairstow, Rashid, Wood, Plunkett were all there …

And the point is Rashid typifies the kind of player that English cricket usually fails – a talented, slightly inconsistent, unorthodox youngster, a spinner, a leg spinner at that, Asian heritage … and English cricket almost did fail him. He was generally disregarded and written off for a few years after his very young debut – it was Bayliss and Morgan that brought him in, saw his potential, kept trusting him, putting him at the centre of things. They realised the value of taking wickets at unlikely times, not letting the game drift. Rashid took more wickets than anyone else between the two World Cups. He became the go-to bowler, the matchwinner, an undroppable. Yet, he might easily have been dropped during this tournament for a couple of poor returns and for the injury struggles he was clearly having, but Morgan stuck with him, and was rewarded with a key spell in the semi-final against Australia. (it is also worth noting that Rashid has also repaid that faith in him by going from being as close as modern cricket could have to a Tufnell to fielding impeccably, indeed at times superbly effectively, in this tournament).

But, it’s true, he is one of the few England players that could be said to have underperformed in this World Cup … perhaps, to his high standards, that could be said of Buttler, though the final wouldn’t have been won without him.

Everyone else had a great tournament, one way or another. (obviously apart from poor James Vince, and to a certain extent, Moeen Ali). The rest, from Bairstow to Wood, they held up to pressure.

Interestingly, the journey, however it will be seen in retrospect, was far from fool-proof and far from perfect (Alex Hales saw to that). The very strength of England in the years running up to the World Cup was the endless strength of the batting order – from Stokes and Buttler at 5 and 6, you could then have had something like an in-form Ali, Woakes, Willey, Plunkett and Rashid. Everyone a potential gamechanger with the bat, which truly allowed the batsmen above to bat fearlessly.

There was nothing fearless about the way Stokes, for example, batted in this tournament. He was cautious, he knew he had to “go deep”. In the final, he and Buttler knew that it rested on them, and they consequently were – whisper it – a little too cautious.

Because England had sacrificed a little of that batting power for a better bowling attack, almost as if they were cricketing traditionalists or something … Buttler 6 to Woakes 7 is quite the drop-off, then Plunkett, Archer, Rashid (in the wrong order I thought), Wood. Only Rashid of those has ever really been considered an all-rounder and not so much anymore.

But who can say that was wrong now? Wood and Plunkett were superb with the ball, Archer was … terrifying. Funny, that super over was one of the worst he bowled in the whole tournament. Woakes was the player I simply didn’t think he would become 5 years ago.

But, for all that, I’d call Jason Roy the defining man of the tournament. It was his horrible drop of Hafeez off Rashid against Pakistan that gave me a sinking feeling that it was all going to go wrong. It was his injury that meant it really did nearly all go wrong, it was his stunning return from injury that meant it all went right … but then, it that final super over, it was him at deep midwicket sluggishly allowing two twice where Bairstow or Woakes wouldn’t have, and it was him that Guptill hit it to on that last ball - he could easily have been too slow or rattled again, but this time was on it and threw a perfect (almost perfect!) throw into Jos Buttler.

In my soon-to-be-deleted mid-tournament lament, I questioned, whatever the circumstance, the absence of Alex Hales and how the fragility of England’s top order was exposed without a like-for-like back-up for Roy. Now Hales no longer matters. Roy proved himself the absolute key man. If his hamstring had been a little worse, England would not have won the World Cup. Simple as that. Everything else is what ifs, decisions that look right in retrospect but could easily have been wrong. But there is simply no doubt that England were a completely different team with Roy in it.

Perhaps the one player who would have been left with the greatest regret if England had lost was Joe Root. Of all the people … he made 7 off 30 balls. I doubt he’s ever had 7 off 30 balls in a test match. If there’s one cricketer you can guarantee to skip to 20 off 25 balls, for whom 20 off 25 balls is a bit of a failure, it’s Joe Root, but somehow, he forgot he was Joe Root for a few overs, and that could have cost England dear. “The worst innings of my professional career” he called it. Nice.

I’ve somehow ended up talking about bad performances and decisions, or decisions that might have ended up bad. It goes without saying that most of the decisions in the last four years have been good, from Strauss to Bayliss to Morgan and Buttler and Ed Smith. Decisions of tactics, batting order, selection, toss, kit, fielding positions, they’ve got nearly all of them right. Every one of them is to be commended.

I think, and I hope, it’s started to feed into the test team too. I would pick an Ashes squad with most of the same guys in – obviously with Anderson, Broad, Sam for Tom Curran, Jack Leach, Foakes, to add to consideration, but I wouldn’t change much else. These are winners. Let them carry on being winners.

My own personal team of the tournament was very similar to the official ICC one (Sharma, Roy, Williamson, Root, Shakib, Stokes, Carey, Starc, Archer, Ferguson, Bumrah). I think I had Nabi of Afghanistan rather than Lockie Ferguson because I thought maybe there needed to be another spinner, but, you know what, I’m wrong about that (Shakib’s astonishing batting briefly made me forget he’s one of the world’s best spinners, and it just never turned into a spinner’s tournament anyway). Maybe Woakes rather than Ferguson though. And I don’t even know how you can not have Jonny Bairstow. I think I’d have Bairstow over Roy even though I’ve just said Roy was the key man in the whole tournament. Cos … d’oh …

England Overall Player Ratings:

Roy 9, Bairstow 9.5, Root 8.5, Morgan 8, Stokes 9, Buttler 7, Woakes 9, Plunkett 9, Rashid 6.5, Wood 8.5, Archer 9.5, Moeen Ali 5, James Vince 4 (for the fielding), Tom Curran N/A, Liam Dawson N/A

I grudgingly accept the format ended up working quite well, though it needed England’s loss to Sri Lanka to spark it to life. They won't go back to having member states next time, i wouldn't have thought, though I think they should. 

My favourite moment of the tournament: Discounting the final moment of glory, where I made more noise than was helpful, it had to be Warner being out in the semi-final to Woakes. In that moment, all my worst fears about the fate of the tournament were blown away. All along I'd thought, Australia will win, Warner will make a 100 against England and be man of the tournament. We just have to accept that. 

But sometimes things go as well as you can hope.