My hands were actually shaking during the 2019 World Cup final despite having no dog in this hunt. There's been too many World Cup finals that've been a one sided anticlimax where the winner was all but confirmed after the first 50 overs.
However this match twisted and turned, and you couldn't call the outcome until the very last ball of the Super Over. In all my years of watching cricket, I haven't seen as many incidents in one match that could've swung the game either way than this final. If the chances of a tied Super Over to decide a World Cup final was slim, what are the chances of a fielder throwing the ball from the deep and catching the middle of the bat of a batsman diving full length to his crease, and the ball ricocheting to the boundary ?
Or who can forget Trent Boult, one of the best fielders in the world, stepping on the boundary just weeks after taking a superb catch on the boundary edge in another hair raising finale in the game in Manchester vs West Indies ? How cruel given how NZ fielded like champions in that final, for luck to go against them on the big stage.
Lord's is generally a reserved place that doesn't display its emotions readily but the atmosphere reached a hysterical frenzy in the final 90 minutes unlike anything at an English ground. One MCC member even had a heart attack. Thank God Pakistan have not been in such circumstances because I've no doubt some of our people would've gone to the hospital given how much more emotional we are.
And I finally come to Ben Stokes. A biopic could be written about his redemption story. Outside England, this guy was one of the most loathed individuals on the field. Prone to anger and disciplinary infractions even before the Bristol punchup, Stokes had much rehabilitation to do. After a lifechanging summer with an equally outstanding knock in the Headingley Test vs Australia weeks later, he has earned our respect. After decades of English choking in finals, Stokes simply refused to accept defeat. He threw whatever ounce of energy left in his cramping, adrenaline fuelled body behind those boundary shots.
What's also not known is that before Jofra Archer bowled the Super Over, he went to up him and said "Whatever happens, this will not define your legacy." Probably a white lie, but given Stokes' own traumatic history in the final over of a World Cup three years earlier in Kolkata, that was a great display of leadership to take the pressure off the youngster.
In the end England won on a technicality and I know that'll stick in the craw for some, but whatever the outcome it would've been a tragedy for either side to lose. That is not only the iconic moment of the 2010s, but one of cricket's iconic moments period.
