Cricket World Cup 2019: It’s homecoming for England
Shahabuddin Ahmad
IN A DRAMATIC, breathtaking and inexplicable manner the Cricket World Cup final was played on July 14th 2019. England defeated New Zealand with more number of boundaries to lift the coveted trophy for the first time at Lord’s after 44 years. As the 50-over clash ended in a tie, the match entered Super Over stage and England scored 15 off the six balls and New Zealand had to score 16 to get their World Cup dreams come true. But New Zealand managed to score only 15 and England won on the basis of the number of boundaries each team had hit during the match.
Ben Stokes (England) was declared as Man-of-the-match of the final and Kane Williamson (578 runs) (New Zealand) was declared Player of the Tournament.
Bangladesh
Uncertainties, Catch miss are not necessarily the reasons for failure in cricket matches, although there is a saying “Catch miss is match miss”. Tamim Iqbal missed an opportunity to catch out Rohit Sharma but he missed it and comments from all the Bangladeshi cricket lovers were that Bangladesh lost the match because Tamin failed to catch Rohit Sharma’s ball. There are innumerable occasions in cricket games that many players missed catches but still they or their team did well.
The Bangladesh team was making preparations for the last few years to participate in the Cricket World Cup 2019 but could not make the mark. There is heart-searching by the BCB to find out why the team failed to reach the semifinal. The press and the team raised high hopes and the media lent a very strong support.
Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, the captain of the Bangladeshi team, was honest in his confession to say “As a captain when the team doesn’t fulfill expectations, then I shall have to accept criticism”. He was candid in not saying ‘if’s and ‘but’s for the exit but had the courage to say what he said. Although he has been holding the post of captain of the Bangladesh team for quite some time, some critics say that he was not physically fit as he had to undergo several knee operations. Cricket lovers have observed that every time he readied himself for bowling in the field, he used to pull up knee cap. They observed that on his own, Mashrafe should have resigned from international cricket, if not domestic cricket.
Shakib Al Hasan made his mark in the game as also Mustafizur Rahman. Both Mustafiz and Shakib were highlighted through the telops during the game on many occasions. Mustafiz made his debut in the International Cricket in 2015 through his cutters. Shakib’s name was suggested in the ICC circulated reports as the Player of the Tournament 2019 but he could not win the title as Bangladesh could not qualify in the semis. Kane Williamson has been awarded the Player of the Tournament after the final game played on July 14 2019 in which New Zealand became the runners-up. This year the world cup generated tension and expectation of an unprecedented level. As the visitors of the Lord’s were full to the brim so were the viewers outside London, all over the world.
England’s long cherished desire to win the Cricket World Cup has been fulfilled attributable to speed, discipline and unity of approach to win the game. The world has possibly seen the first Super Over of the game. No reference of the super over having been played in the past is available in any website. Was the principle for it was decided much earlier as Duckworth-Lewis method?
The list of the Man of the Tournament award winners:
Source: ICC
1992 New Zealand Martin Crowe 456 runs
1996 Sri Lanka Sanath Jayasuriya 221 runs and 7 wickets
1999 South Africa Lance Klusener 281 runs and 17 wickets
2003 India Sachin Tendulkar 673 runs and 2 wickets
2007 Australia Glenn Mcgrath 26 wickets
2011 India Yuvraj Singh 362 Runs and 15 wickets
2015 Australia Mitchell Starc 22 Wickets
2019 New Zealand Kane Williamson 578 runs
Eoin Morgan: World Cup-winning captain 2019
Kane Williamson: Runners-up captain 2019
[The writer is Editor of The Travel World.]
