Should the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 Have Been Shared?

The ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 has just come home. Should it really have? Or should it have been shared? A remarkable competition came to a remarkable end. And if you like both cricket and tennis, your situation is the best. Or maybe the worst. Difficult to imagine.

You know that The Wimbledon and The World Cup are getting into an equally dramatic climax. But what you do not know is how to watch both. If only one of them was scheduled for another day. Even more difficult to imagine a New Zealand cricket fan who absolutely loves Roger Federer. Perhaps those are the real men. Those who can come out of absolute heart break.

Yes, it was nothing less than heart break for New Zealand. A match of absolute craziness. Who would have thought Trent Boult would catch it, but not notice the boundary rope? Who would have thought Ben Stokes’s bat would hit a six without Ben Stokes actually hitting it? Who would have thought both the teams would need two off the last ball? Did anyone ever until now give it a thought that the match could seemingly end as a tie twice and still give a result?

How fair was the result though? OH! How tough is that question? If only I could put it aside as rhetorical. Put everything aside, and it was an excellent cricket match, until the winner had to be decided. Two teams who had never won a World Cup, never seemingly wanted to win the World Cup. Both the teams were asked to score 2 runs off 1 ball to lift the World Cup. Both managed only 1.

But England win. By how many runs? Not the question. By how many wickets? Still not the question.  By how many boundaries? Do you want to ask this? That is how England have won the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019. By boundaries? How disheartening for New Zealand! The Man of the Series, Kane Williamson, is himself not a big boundary scorer. Scoring lesser boundaries is good enough to win Man of the Tournament but not the Tournament?

The match saw one of the most dramatic ends to a cricket match you will ever see. One team emerged victorious, not because it had scored more runs, but because it had scored more part of its runs in boundaries than the other team. You might feel it was a tie. But it doesn’t matter. England’s name has been inscribed as the winners of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019.