England would have spent plenty of time in the lead-up to their encounter with New Zealand pondering the best way to winkle out Kane Williamson.
The Black Caps’ captain had been averaging 113 in the tournament, with match-winning centuries against South Africa and West Indies that had once again underlined his status among the world’s elite batsmen.
Williamson plays the ball late and under his eyes. He eliminates risk while still scoring positively. His wry sense of humour is in keeping with a cricketer devoid of ego, such that he scarcely loses concentration or allows the heat of battle to induce mistakes. In short, he is bloody hard to budge.
But in the end, as New Zealand looked to hunt down a target of 306 for their highest total of the campaign, this highly prized scalp came down not to a pre‑hatched plan or a wonder ball but instead the merest flicker of a finger.
There is arguably no more galling way to be out in cricket than when backing up at the non-striker’s end. And yet in the 16th over Williamson found himself staring at the big screen hoping, desperately, that he was safe from this particular fate.
It was not to be, with the replay showing that Ross Taylor’s straight drive off a Mark Wood yorker had touched the bowler’s outstretched hand and, having crashed into the stumps, caught the New Zealand captain out of his ground.
The sell-out crowd erupted in delight, knowing this was likely the moment that England’s semi-final berth had been sealed. Wood, who had around 50 friends and family among them, wore the face of a lottery winner as his fellow local, Ben Stokes, engulfed him in an almighty bear hug.
If Adil Rashid’s slingshot throw to run out Taylor nine balls later was testament to the Yorkshireman’s hard work in training, then Wood’s intervention felt an embodiment of the fortune that has seemingly gone England’s way since the defeat by Australia at Lord’s. Up to this point the soggy weather had seen them play on trickier pitches than they had envisaged. They lost Jason Roy for three games with a torn hamstring. Marginal decisions were going against them, such as the early lbw shout against the centurion Aaron Finch when on 18 or Jonny Bairstow’s first-baller in the defeat against Sri Lanka.
Their perilous predicament had resulted from some inflexible batting on said surfaces and heightened anxiety in the squad. But there was nevertheless a sense that, after four years spent working towards this home World Cup, events were somehow also conspiring against them.
When sunshine broke out over Birmingham three days before the India game, and Roy was patched up sufficiently to return, it somehow marked a fresh start to their campaign in this regard.
At Edgbaston Eoin Morgan won the first of two helpful tosses in these quasi-quarter-finals. Roy and Jonny Bairstow saw early inside edges miss the stumps by a whisker. MS Dhoni talked Virat Kohli out of a review for a caught behind off Roy on 21 that would have broken England’s 160-run opening stand with only 49 on the board.
Roy also suffered a blow to his arm from Jasprit Bumrah that allowed him to skip the second innings in the field – something that might have risked a relapse – while still staying within the regulations.
At Chester-le-Street the fortunes went beyond the coin-flip, the weather and Wood’s digit. The loss of Lockie Ferguson with a tight hamstring on the morning of the match meant England would not have to counter the 90mph thunderbolts that had reaped 17 middle-over wickets.
New Zealand’s run chase then faltered in Chris Woakes’s opening over when Henry Nicholls was trapped lbw to a ball that was shown to be missing the stumps. The opener dawdled and time ran out to review.
None of this is to say England have not booked their semi-final place on merit. But as they head back to Birmingham, it certainly feels as if those oft-invoked cricketing gods are smiling on them once more.
