This is always going to be a problem. How do you break a deadlock? I agree that the scoreboard is king but as long as whatever criteria is used is clear and understood beforehand then I’ve got no problem with it. I’d have had no problem with wickets down as the deciding factor either.
I don’t know, the “act” in this case seems to clearly be the deflection rather than the throw that caused it. No matter. It was a ridiculous fluke either way and seeing as it wasn’t the last ball then we can’t know how the last balls would have been played if it were a 5 and not a 6.
Indeed. As already discussed, whatever final tiebreaker you use can have side effects. While most of us in this thread are purists in terms of wanting cricket to be a fairly even contest between bat and ball, if wickets were the tiebreaker this could incentivise defensive play, whereas boundaries could encourage attacking play, so I think that’s as good a basis as any and better than drawing lots.
I think yesterday has knocked years off my life. I’ve certainly never seen anything like it before, and I doubt I ever will again; and if I do I hope England aren’t involved. I wouldn’t be able to take it.
NZ were spectacularly unlucky, and if the members of this message board ever see me bemoaning England’s luck in cricket ever again, you have my permission to remind me, forcefully if needs be, of this match. We’ve probably taken 30 years worth of luck in one game here. In a game of these margins, you can literally go ball by ball and spot something that “cost” or “won” the match. Kumar Dharmasena gave Roy a life on the first ball - Roy scored 18 and a wicket would have bought Root to the wicket earlier who couldn’t get it off the square. That’s the game. De Grandhomme dropped Bairstow on 18, he got 36. That’s the game. Between them, these chances also resulted in England scoring 6 more boundaries, 2 more went over from Boult stepping on the boundary rope and those over throws. Save one more boundary anywhere in the game and you’ve tied the boundaries. This before getting to the really substantive stuff. And then you can go on, and on. You can look at anything, the game was right there.
Buttler was brilliant yesterday, about the only bat to play with any fluency - just came in and immediately started going at a run a ball. Stokes’ knock was obviously the one that got us in position but Buttler was magnificent.
If Williamson were an Indian and Kohli a Kiwi, India would have won this World Cup. I thought Williamson’s fielding plans yesterday were superb and his bowlers bowled to then brilliantly. In the abstract, it’s a massive shame that they didn’t win and I hope they go out and get a major tournament soon.
England needed this though - we’ve diminished the red ball game enormously over the last several years and hugely prioritised white ball forms of cricket. The ECB taking the game off terrestrial TV has killed the game’s profile for the majority of the country, and the bulk of this World Cup was shown behind a pay wall, at the insistence of the governing body who were desperate for money. England needed this win to try and re-introduce the game to the masses - especially with the final being put on free TV - and to do it in this manner might actually persuade kids they want to pick up a bat and ball. In many senses, the important work starts now; the ECB have been given a lifeline, they must not drop it.
I saw the Kiwi innings, and thought they could have got closer to 270 but that if ENG got the 240 they would have earned the title.
Woke up about 3am when ENG were 4-140 and thought they would get home with but if Kiwis could get that mythical couple of wickets then the free-to-air couch potatoes in UK might need to be wearing brown corduroys. Needing to kill off a lurgie I went back to bed.
Haven’t seen anything of the last 15 overs, have read several reports and would love to watch the entirely of what is one of the greatest, nea probably the greatest game of cricket played in my lifetime.
But you Pommie bastards absolutely burgled that one.
No, it is not. The “act” refers only to “the wilful act of a fielder.” The decision was simply a really bad blunder. I am surprised that experienced umpires could make the mistake.
I am surprised at Marais Erasmus making that error. I am not surprised that Kumar Dharmasena made the error. Here’s George Dobell (at around the 1m mark in this video) having a go at him after the semi final.
I think Dobell is right - Dharmasena is a poor umpire and I am amazed that he was standing in this game. Aleem Dar was the 4th umpire and probably should have been on the field.
For overthrows. Not deflections. The question the umpires were asking was if it should be called dead ball, not the number of runs.
This was not strictly overthrows.
If the ball had missed everyone or if Latham had fumbled it, then yes.
As soon as it happened I said it felt unfair. I wonder if the law should be changed to make it a dead ball in such situations? I don’t really see why not. It makes sense that the onus is on the fielding team to avoid throwing at the batsman and there should be no penalty if the runner does accidentally get in the way, but there shouldn’t be a penalty for the fielding team either, which is effectively what this amounted to. Maybe it’s never happened before (certainly not in such dramatic and comprehensive fashion).
For the avoidance of doubt, if the ball hits the stumps with the runner safely in the crease, overthrows should of course accrue from there if applicable.
I’d make the whole thing dead, if I were ruler of the world. Feels silly to me to penalise the fielder who has the ability to do what they were meant to in breaking the wicket, just because the ball ricochets away.
If they miss everything completely and it runs away, you’d have the overthrows then.
Old school captain. The tactical genius who wins games with captaincy. A rarity these days. MS Dhoni showed flashes of it. Ditto Misbah. Of the current lot, Morgan has shown flashes of it.
But the onfield General. Who leads. Like Peter May or Steve Waugh. Imran Khan or Ian Chappell.
Yeah, Williamson is in that league.
Meant to ask this earlier, but why didn’t they play another super over? Seems like it wouldn’t be that hard to set up. Each team should have 3 more batsmen and 1 more bowler ready.
It’s the law of diminishing returns - as stated, it’s already very rare for an ODI to be tied. Of those, this is the first to even have a super over, let alone be tied after it. What if the teams are tied after the second super over, why not have a third? In the end you have to draw the line somewhere and accept a less-ideal but final tiebreaker (had they been tied on boundaries also, I believe drawing of lots (or in practice, presumably, coin toss) would be the final decider.
Cricinfo suggests that the next tie would be going back, ball by ball, through the super over and the innings until you get to a ball which is different, and the highest runs off that ball wins. Since England scored a 4 off the final ball and NZ got a single, Eng would win that. I’ve not seen that anywhere else though.
That’s what they should have done. The sun was still up. No one wanted to go home. At least the Super Over is a ‘mini form’ of the basic game - ie, you have a limited amount of overs to score as many runs as possible. No different to a sudden-death playoff at golf, extra innings in Baseball.
The Super Over was invented for T20 Cricket, which was invented as a TV product - a game fits into 3 hours. Time at the end for a couple of interviews to wrap things up, or a Super over. If it’s still tied - eh - sorry, got to get to the next program. Let’s have a Tie Breaker.
No need to rush this - a World Cup only happens once every 4 years. Just keep playing super overs until you get a result.
In this specific instance, they did exactly what they should have done, which was follow the rules laid down before hand. Whether they change the rules for future competitions is a different issue.
That could literally go on for ever - sure, unlikely, but so is having a super over at all. You always need to have something else in place (not least for the scenario where the match (and the reserve day) is curtailed by weather). At some point you have to call it done, and after one super over seems like the best compromise between trying to decide it on the field and have it drag on for too long.
Both teams faced 50 overs, after which they had exactly the same amount of runs. This is already an absurdly unlikely outcome.
Both teams then faced another over, after which they had exactly the same amount of runs.
This tells us something important. It tells that both teams are precisely equally good at cricket. At this point, any means of deciding that actually one team is infinitesimally better at cricket than the other is going to be unsatisfactory. How could it not? One team is not better than the other. We’ve just seen this proven at length.
At this point, for my money, the option that is not only fairest but also best reflects the outcome of the match, is to declare a tie and have both teams share the WC. England and New Zealand - two titans between whom we cannot slip the proverbial cigarette paper. Praise them both. But that’s unpalatable, for perfectly understandable reasons. So we pick some other aspect of playing cricket and use that to break the tie. In this case, boundaries hit. It could be number of extras conceded, or wickets taken, or dot balls bowled (in a tied match, this will be inverse to boundaries hit, I suppose) or DRS on the last ball or some other minor statistic, but whatever it is it will leave a bad taste in the mouth because at this point we are trying to make a distinction where no distinction exists. Unsatisfactory options are all we have.
If multiple SuperOvers are something people take issue with, then instead have two Extra innings of 5 overs each. All XI bat and one bowler bowls max 1 over each (maybe 1 can bowl 2).
Thats at least a truncated version of the game, like extra-time in football, or hockey.
Then go the tie breakers, like wickets lost.
