World Cup final 2019: A dive, a deflection, delirium and despair
Back in 2016, the British Isles were witness to one of the most titanic sporting fairy tales ever. Leicester City, the rank outsiders, stunned one and all on their way to an unprecedented Premier League triumph, indicating that the sporting gods are kind and considerate enough to accommodate such narratives, sometimes.
Three years later, New Zealand, cricket’s perennial underdogs yet counter-punchers, found themselves within a whisker of world cricketing domination. Incredibly, that too was happening on English soil and against a nation that has seen its fair share of sporting fables.
Yet, they came unstuck when Ben Stokes’ bat (literally) got in the way and turned the tide in England’s favour. And in a matter of moments, cricket had portrayed that it has a cruel side to it, after all.
The event happened in the 50th over of England’s innings when the Three Lions required 9 runs off 3 balls. Stokes was the man on strike and he smeared the delivery towards Martin Guptill at deep mid-wicket. The fielder swooped up the ball cleanly and took aim at the striker’s end, the place where the English all-rounder was stretching every muscle to get to. In order to make his ground, Stokes brought out the extravagant dive and the ball inadvertently deflected off his bat and trickled towards the boundary. England were awarded six runs in the process and their target was suddenly reduced to 3 runs off 2 balls.
A hand of apology from the Englishman was his first reaction and Kane Williamson too raised his arms in shock more than hope. Yet, the damage had been done by then. Inevitably, that overthrow led to a furore across the globe with many questioning the umpire’s call to bestow two runs upon the hosts, in addition to the boundary. However, that is where the catch lies and after the dust has settled on the frenetic final, one feels that that outcome could’ve been altered.
In accordance with Law 19.8, which pertains to ‘overthrows or wilful act of fielder’, the number of runs added to the boundary should be equal to the number of runs completed at the point of the throw in addition to the run in progress at the point when the throw is released. And unfortunately for the umpires, footage shows that Adil Rashid and Stokes hadn’t crossed each other for the second run when Guptill took aim at the stumps.
However, while the easy option would be to blame Kumar Dharmasena, Marais Erasmus and the likes, the cricketing top brass could do well to identify the crux of the problem, which in this case, seems to be the ambiguity of the laws that govern the game.
A few months ago, similar uproar in an interpretation of the laws took centre stage when Ravichandran Ashwin decided to ‘Mankad’ Jos Buttler in the Indian Premier League. Thus, highlighting that such scenarios run the risk of dominating the back pages unless looked after properly.
Umpiring is the most thankless job in cricket and to be fair to them, they aren’t really being helped by the open-ended nature of the laws that they are being asked to implement on the field. Hence, with such drama unfolding in the planet’s biggest cricketing encounter, one feels the time could be ripe for slight tweaks which make the rules a lot more spotless.
As for the World Cup final, it certainly smacks of irony. A match which contained several moments of sheer genius could now be remembered for a deflection that was the source of delirium for one side and despair for the other.
Stokes’ magical innings, Lockie Ferguson’s brilliant spell of fast bowling or Jofra Archer’s nerveless display could yet slip into the wilderness. England’s fearless avengers and New Zealand’s persevering warriors could all play a bit-part role when looking back at the final, years down the line. And that, should lead one to introspect how it all veered towards the said conclusion.
After all, no one likes a fairy tale to go awry, just because the backdrop and the characters weren’t developed well enough.
Funnily though, of all the possible climaxes for a World Cup finale, the one that panned out on Sunday came to fruition. And one reckons that even the great Dr. Strange might not have been able to predict such an ending among the 14 million possibilities he envisaged.
But then again, hasn’t sport taught us to expect the unexpected, always?
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