Swinging for the hills, reaching the stars
Wonderfully devastating, hideously marvellous, beautifully grotesque, savagely delightful, the final moments of the Twenty20 World Cup were ludicrously, inconceivably, awesomely dramatic. The final’s finale was undeniably vicious but also, for all that, gorgeous, like standing in front of Van Gogh’s Starry Night when it suddenly develops arms and fists and clobbers your helpless self about the head, leaving you dazed and bewildered, dribbling senselessly on the floor, wracked simultaneously by pain and – weirdly, unfathomably – exhilaration.
Beyond boggling at the cool-headed brutality of Carlos Brathwaite’s batting and its possible effect on the psyche of Ben Stokes, this more than anything was an opportunity to genuflect before the glory of sport. It would have been a memorable, dramatic match even if, as had seemed likely when Stokes and Eoin Morgan stood in deep discussion near the bowler’s mark following Chris Jordan’s excellent penultimate over, West Indies had batted out the final deliveries and fallen just short of their moderate target. But this match was not destined just to be admired. There was another twist to come, the twist of a serrated knife.
At that moment, however, England had several things in their favour, among them the fact that Stokes was bowling, and Brathwaite was batting. Stokes had bowled the 20th over in England’s three previous matches, conceding three runs against New Zealand (who batted first), four in the must-win game against Sri Lanka (who started the over needing an achievable 15), and eight against Afghanistan, who had needed a Brathwaitesque 24. In those matches he had bowled 11 overs, 66 legal deliveries, and conceded two sixes.
Brathwaite, meanwhile, was batting for only the fifth time in Twenty20 internationals, with one innings (two balls, one run, caught slogging at long-off) in 2011, one (two balls, one run, caught slogging at deep midwicket) in 2015 and the other two in this tournament, an unbeaten 10 against South Africa and 13 against Afghanistan, when he was brilliantly caught by Najibullah Zadran off the bowling of Mohammad Nabi. But then he had already broken new ground during the final, taking more wickets that day than in his seven previous T20 internationals put together.
Between them, his four previous knocks had featured fewer sixes – and only one more run – than he was to get during the final over in Kolkata. West Indies had scored three sixes in the final to that point, sending 2.6% of all balls faced over the rope. Suddenly, they reached 100%. Sport has a habit of cocking a snook at precedent, but this was a supersnook. Compared to average snooks, this one was snooker. “I just wanted to stay still, forget the crowd, forget the occasion,” said Brathwaite of the moments before Stokes started running. Forget the occasion, yet remember the need to score 19 runs from six deliveries, the requirement, as Marlon Samuels commanded him, to “swing for the hills”. Brathwaite swung for the hills, and he reached the stars.
It was not a moment for the purist. What came next had drama and gut-wrenching power enough to overcome a slight lack of quality. The bowling was ordinary, the batting vicious. Brathwaite certainly achieved the stillness he wanted, barely flinching, bat raised, until Stokes released the ball, whereupon he burst into brutal action. His third shot was crude, a mishit, victory of power over technique. This, the knockout blow, was the biff of a slugger in what had become a two-man brawl, the other 20 players reduced to spectators, tasked at most with fetching the ball from some distant boundary.
So what, then, were we to make of Stokes? In 1998, when England were knocked out of the football World Cup by Argentina after David Beckham was sent off, effigies of the future national team captain were strung up by the neck. When Wayne Rooney was sent off against Portugal in 2006, it was the winking Cristiano Ronaldo who earned the vitriol. England is a nation fond of a sporting scapegoat; the end of their last cricket World Cup campaign a year ago created a veritable squadron of them.
On Sunday Stokes presented them with another, fully formed and gloriously gift-wrapped, equipped with snarling attitude and locker-bothering backstory. And it has been refused. Samuels, whose particular hatred of Stokes had become clear during England’s tour of the West Indies last year, gloated that the Englishman was a choker, “a nervous lad” who was “going to bowl a couple of full tosses, as always”, and spoke so rudely to Stokes during the final over that he was fined 30% of his match fee, behaviour that seemed a bit rich from a player who would simultaneously decry the lack of respect he receives from others. For all that, Stokes has been met not with a shower of fury but with affection. On Twitter, where people emboldened by anonymity launch into the most vile abuse at the slightest provocation, Stokes said he was “overwhelmed by all the support”. His personal anguish in those moments was clear, and his emotion, his humanity certainly added to their eviscerating power. This was not a crime without victims. Perhaps we most admire sportsmen who are routinely, reliably superlative, but love those who allow us occasionally to see their flaws.
While some of his team-mates celebrated a little over-enthusiastically, Brathwaite’s own response has been impressive, his post-match interviews an admirable combination of ecstasy and humility. Stokes, he insisted, is “an absolute legend”. “You shouldn’t forget what he has done for England in the past couple of months,” he said. “To Ben, tough luck last night, commiserations to you and the England team. Wish he has a long and successful career ahead of him.”
England’s charity towards Stokes might in part be due to an acceptance that they had only reached the final because a few similar moments had gone their way. Stokes had provided a few of them, most obviously when he sent the only delivery he faced against Sri Lanka, the last of the innings, over midwicket for six vital runs. In a tournament full of thrilling games that teetered throughout on a knife-edge, England could have felt this sharp blade so much sooner. Victories over Sri Lanka, South Africa and New Zealand could all have gone the other way, leaving only the group game against West Indies, which they lost, and an uncomfortable win over Afghanistan.
Only in the final two overs of that game did England extend their total to anything remotely defensible, as Moeen Ali and David Willey scored 25 runs off the 19th and 10 off the last. In his past 10 T20 internationals Moeen has averaged 9.5 with the bat, getting out for nought four times, one once, and reaching double figures only on that day in Delhi. In the final he was out second ball, feathering a catch to the keeper from what would otherwise have been a leg-side wide, and didn’t bowl at all. This was perhaps because of memories of his final over against Sri Lanka, which Angelo Mathews and Thisara Perera enjoyed to the tune of 21 runs, or his final over in the earlier match against West Indies, which went for 24 including three successive Chris Gayle sixes, but given his form with the bat the decision made him unlikely to contribute to the game at all, and so it proved.
Unreliable as Moeen had been, England would never have reached the final were it not for him, and the very great majority of his team-mates could make an identical claim. Their success was borne of hope, skill and a collective spirit; given how their last World Cup ended they did not require silverware to make this one a triumph.
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