Twelve months on from England’s first ODI World Cup title, captain Eoin Morgan has revealed he felt that his team were “dead and buried” against New Zealand on that evening at the Lord’s.
On July 14, 2019, England claimed the 50-over World Cup trophy after beating the Kiwis by virtue of a contentious boundary countback rule as scores were tied even after the super over. It was arguably one of the greatest finals in cup history.
“There’s only one (moment of doubt) for me and it probably came to me the second time I watched it. Jimmy Neesham’s bowling to Ben, he bowls a slower ball, Ben hits it down to long-on and I remember the ball being in the air,” Morgan told ESPNCricinfo.
“And it’s gone high and not quite as long as he’d liked and for a minute I just thought ‘That’s it, it’s over, Ben’s out, we still need 15 an over’ — that’s when I thought for a split second we were dead and buried.”
In that marathon final, New Zealand had scored 241-8 after batting first. They then returned to bowl out England for exactly the same score, thus pushing the match into a super over.
However, that also ended in a tie when New Zealand ended up scoring exactly 15 following Martin Guptill’s run out on the final ball.
England (26) on the basis of a higher boundary count were declared winners against New Zealand (17).
The 33-year-old Morgan, who has scored 7,368 runs in 236 ODIs for England so far, said that World Cup final was “actually bigger than cricket”.
“It’s actually propelled up as one of the highlights of a sporting day ever in British history that will be around for a very long time so it was probably more satisfying that it will continue to be like that,” said Morgan, who managed to watch the final three times during the coronavirus lockdown.
Morgan has now shifted his focus on topping this achievement by claiming the two T20 World Cups lined up in Australia and India.
“There hasn’t been a team who have held T20 and 50-over World Cups so that would be a nice challenge,” he said.
“But, realistically, probably out of the next two World Cups, winning one of them would be unbelievable. To win two would be a bigger achievement than winning the 50-over World Cup.
“Just because both of them are away from home and would favour Australia in Australia and India in India, so you would have to win both of them to top the 50-overs win.”
