Well Left, Mitchell

Today new writer William Buckingham discusses one of the most extraordinary events to occur on a cricket field in living memory. And we’re not talking about Ben Stokes’s heroics at Headingley or Kusal Perera’s miracle at Durban …

During this period of lockdown I have, inevitably, watched the 2019 Cricket World Cup Final a fair few times. It will always be remembered as an extraordinary game. But there’s one moment that never ceases to amaze me. No, not the deflection off Ben Stokes’ bat (although that was rather unbelievable), but the last ball of New Zealand’s innings.

New Zealand, placed on 241/8, had Mitchell Santner facing up to Jofra Archer for the final ball of the innings. What was Santner’s plan? One would assume it would be to swing and hope for a boundary, or at least get ‘bat on ball’. After all, the last ball of an innings is like a free hit.

Instead, quite unbelievably, Santner ducked beneath Archer’s slower ball bouncer.

I REPEAT, MITCHELL SANTNER LEFT THE LAST BALL OF NEW ZEALAND’S INNINGS.

At the time it didn’t seem like a significant moment. But knowing the events that followed, and how vital every single run would turn out to be, only heightens the madness of this boneheaded decision. Imagine how the course of history might’ve changed if Santner had bothered to throw bat at ball in anger.

Yes, there were a few moments like that in the final. But this one, for me, is different to those like Trent Boult’s ‘moment’ when he stood on the rope having caught Ben Stokes, or indeed the numerous times when the ball was thrown to the wrong end.

Mitchell Santner had control over that moment. There was nothing stopping him from trying to hit the ball. Yes, he might have missed if he’d tried BUT missing the ball would’ve been an understandable error. There is nothing – absolutely nothing – to justify leaving the thing. It’s like Trent Boult not even attempting to take ‘that’ catch.

The big question, one I suspect Santner still asks himself, is why? Why would Santner leave the last ball?

Santner doesn’t lack ability with the bat – he’s scored a test match hundred after all. You’d like to think he wasn’t batting for his average in a World Cup Final. Nor do I believe Santner lacks cricketing intelligence.

I suspect it was just a brain fade, a moment of madness. Perhaps understandable given the pressure of the occasion and the threat of Archer’s pace. Nonetheless, if Santner had the opportunity to play that moment again, I’m sure he would, quite easily, have approached things very differently.

Compounding Santner’s brain fart was the fact that neither batsman attempted to run a single. After all, it’s common practice to attempt a sneaky bye when it goes through to the wicketkeeper at the death. There’s every chance that, had Trent Boult been backing up excessively (as might have been expected), he would’ve completed a single pretty easily and added a vital run.

In short, the last ball should have been anything but a dot ball. New Zealand should have scored at least 242 rather than 241.

England therefore would have lost by one run. Cricket would not have come home. Ben Stokes would not have won Sports Personality Of The Year. And the decision to prioritise white ball cricket for four years would’ve been for absolutely nothing.

These fine margins boggle the mind. It’s a funny old game.

William Buckingham

11 comments

  • This is why, for all the flaws of boundary countback, people who suggest fewest wickets lost would be a better tie-breaker are wrong. A tiebreaker which rewards the bad cricket described above, but penalises good cricket – Rashid sacrificing his wicket to keep Stokes on strike, and Wood his to attempt the winning run – is, imho, obviously worse than one which rewards aggressive batting.

  • I seriously doubt any cricket WC I’ve watched (which is all of them) has not been corrupted. That’s not to say the winner has always been fixed but that certain exits and achievements have been.

  • You could equally say that if New Zealand had scored that extra run, Ben Stokes wouldn’t have just tried to run a two off our last ball, a full toss incidentally. He would have had a go at a boundary and given his form at the time would likely have got it. No super over required and a ‘comfortable’ win.
    It’s impossible to speculate as the tactics of the opposition would change with different circumstances.

  • By the same token, given England hit more boundaries yet scores were tied, England conceded more dot balls and therefore presumably had more leaves. So arguably more remarkable they didn’t try to hit just one of those and so would have won.

  • Bransgrove reportedly selling up at Hampshire.

    He claims he’s achieved everything he set out to which is manifestly not the case. Does he know something about what the next few years have in store? (for those unaware, an awful lot of CEOs left major companies just before lockdown hit which suggests foreknowledge).

    The club is likely to be left dependent on foreign capital with a white elephant ground with large overheads and very weak local grassroots. It’s not recipe that breeds great confidence in the future.

    • Let the badly run counties die. If they aren’t building up local talent then they deserve to be left to die

  • I read the headline of this subject with some consternation. I still find it difficult to come to terms with the Australian habit of using my surname as a first name! I then thought “How could anyone have known about what happened to me 45 years ago in a limited overs cricket match between 2 branches of the insurance company for whom I worked? I reported in the in house magazine but really! ” I was batting and we needed 6 to win. The bowler sent down a full toss way above my head which I promptly hit for six. My glasses were a bit on the loose side and in my effort to hit the ball, they fell off and dislodged the leg bail. Out hit wicket! I’m not sure when the law was changed making full tosses above shoulder height a no ball but it didn’t apply then. So under current laws, at least I wouldn’t have been out but would it have been 7 runs or just 1?

  • Santner was lucky! When an England player didn’t run on the last ball of an innings against NZ when the score was 241, even though it was off 20 overs and he had a hundred, he seemed to earn the undying enmity of his captain (not very hard, it seems!) and a black mark against his future international prospects….

    • Do you say that as a Middx fan Michael, or just generally?!

      I’m interested because it seemed overly harsh to me, although I can understand the thoroughness of wanting to take every single run etc (probably difficult to know if Malan was really doing it for selfish reasons or not, although interesting too that Morgan was his county teammate).

      More generally, the approach under Morgan seems to me to have become too harsh, too unforgiving and too moralistic. It reminds me uncomfortably of the Flower era–interviews with Morgan to me reveal a similarly over-zealous view of player behaviour–and the nonsense of the Pietersen-era “rehabilitation sessions”. They’re selectors of an international sports team ffs, not Catholic priests conducting confession or a Communist party secretariat conducting a denunciation session. When I read some of the recent stories about Hales, anyone would have thought he was an unreformed criminal rather than someone who’d pissed off his teammates by acting rather selfishly.

      I’m also concerned to read stories suggesting that Morgan rather than the selectors is the one selecting the one-day team. This too is the exact overreach of power that made Flower such a problem in the end.

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