According to the ICC the average age of people who have bought tickets for this World Cup is 40, but one would never have known it on Thursday morning. It felt as if there were 25,000 children spilling out of the tube stations and pouring up Harleyford Road towards the Oval.
Everyone who cares feels a bit like a little kid again on days such as this, especially now England have a team worth getting childishly excited about. So the stands rang with that very particular sound, unique to a cricket ground, the happy chitter‑chatter of people who have escaped adult life for the day and are waiting for the start of play.
They were treated to a superhero turn from Ben Stokes, who made 89, took two catches – one of them so utterly preposterous that it seemed to have already become a meme by the time the next batsman came in – made a spectacular run-out and took the two match-winning wickets in back-to-back deliveries. This could be a career-defining summer for everyone in this England squad, but, if Stokes plays like this again, he could win himself the sort of folk heroism that Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff enjoyed in their playing days, and from a public who mostly know him, right now, for an incident outside a nightclub.
Back in 2016, Stokes called his autobiography Firestarter. These days, though, he seems more like a firefighter. Eoin Morgan had warned his team, more than once, that this would be a particularly strange and challenging game for them.
“The first match of a World Cup always feels different from any other game,” he had said earlier in the week. “Everyone is going to feel that anticipation and excitement.”
And those nerves showed. Their usual routine was upset by all the opening-match carry-on, a parade of flags and balloons and acrobats, a speech by Prince Harry that seemed to drag on slightly too long.
England had been waiting for this for at least a week now – “we just want it to start,” Morgan said once after the last warm-up game against Afghanistan on Monday and again at the opening ceremony on Wednesday. Now it was finally here, these last few minutes seemed to stretch on forever, and one could feel the players growing tense and on edge.
Ben Stokes’s feat joins a long list of contenders for the title. Among English cricket’s other finest recent catches:
Paul Collingwood
England v Australia, third ODI, Jun 2005
As Matthew Hayden produces a powerful cut, Collingwood soars high, arched back, and holds the ball tight. Hailed as one of the best catches of all time.
Andrew Strauss
England v Australia, fourth Test, Aug 2005
Adam Gilchrist pushes at an Andrew Flintoff delivery, Strauss flings himself to his left and clings on. England win by three wickets and edge a stunning series 2-1.
Sarah Taylor
England v Australia, third ODI, Aug 2013
Wicketkeeper Taylor spots Jodie Fields attempting to reverse-sweep Dani Hazell and moves to right, sticking out a glove at full-stretch. A stunning take.
Chris Jordan
West Indies v England, first Test, April 2015
Having already taken one fine catch, Jordan throws himself to his right to take another off Darren Bravo when it appeared the ball had gone past him.
Ben Stokes
England v Australia, fourth Test, Aug 2015
The moment that created the social media meme #Broadface. Stokes soars almost in slow motion to take a stunner. Bowler Stuart Broad is left astounded.
James Taylor
South Africa v England, third Test, Jan 2016
Hashim Amla flicks a leg glance towards short-leg and Taylor, staying low, clings on just before the ball hits the ground. He takes another fine catch later on.
Ben Foakes
Sri Lanka v England,
second Test, Nov 2017
Short-leg Keaton Jennings anticipates batsman Adil Rashid’s flick behind square, dives to meet it one‑handed and parries it back towards Foakes.
Whether it was deliberate or not, South Africa’s captain, Faf du Plessis, had cooked up a cunning little plan that was perfectly pitched for exactly this situation. He and his team had decided England’s adrenaline-flushed batting lineup could not be outfought but could, perhaps, be out-thought, and his bowlers served up 50 overs of slippery slower balls, all awkward angles and odd lengths, flicks, tricks and cutters, all meant to disrupt England’s freeflowing rhythm and to discomfort their batsmen.
Du Plessis opened the attack with his Tiggerish leg-spinner Imran Tahir, which was something like starting a prize fight with an elaborate feint. It is a trick Du Plessis had used only twice before and, whatever else England were expecting, it was not this. Jonny Bairstow seemed completely foxed by it.
He was caught off the second delivery, out for a golden duck playing inside the line of a ball that took his outside edge. England, then, were one for one, and for a sudden heart-stopping moment there came a rush of flashbacks to all those past disasters, the collapses and other calamities they have endured before.
In the circumstances Joe Root was a wonderfully reassuring presence and his innings soothed all that nervous tension like a prescription medication until, on 51, he was caught at backward point.
It was Stokes who replaced him in the middle. And here, in all the confusion and panic and worry of the moment, he set himself to taking on Root’s work. He got busy turning singles this way and that, nudging, nurdling, ambling along, ever so calm, at less than a run a ball while Morgan, who had only just succeeded Jason Roy, also a half-centurion, blazed away at the other end.
Stokes had 16 runs off 25 balls, and not a four or six among them, then accelerated, gently, to 52 off 50. Morgan came and went, so did Jos Buttler and Moeen Ali, but Stokes batted on, deep into the final overs.
If this England team have a problem, it is that they often let the best be the enemy of the good and fall in a heap reaching for a score above 350 when they might have got away with 75 runs less. But Stokes judged this one right. He finished with 89 off 79 balls, his highest for England in any form of cricket since that night in Bristol.
In the field, though, Stokes unleashed himself. That catch off Adil Rashid to dismiss Andile Phehlukwayo was the moment of the match.
Stokes, at deep midwicket, took off as if he had just stepped on a pin, twisted and stretched his right arm high to take the catch almost as he was turning backwards. There was a bullet throw in to Morgan, too, from the same corner of the field, that ran out Dwaine Pretorius, and then those two tail‑end wickets.
It was the kind of game little kids who love cricket daydream of playing, and perhaps – though we would never admit it – a few of us big ones still do, too.
