Count back those boundaries. For the record England hit 27 and New Zealand 38, but there was no need for spurious tiebreakers as, after restricting their opponents to 282, the Black Caps savaged the reigning 50- and 20-over champions during a response in which practically every over was super. The final game of the last World Cup provided England’s cricket fans with some of their most treasured memories; the first of this one will have produced some of the most grisly.
New Zealand, meanwhile, will treasure those of Devon Conway, raising his bat to celebrate reaching 150, by battering another boundary in what was to be the penultimate over. They eventually cantered across the finish line with 82 balls to spare. There was no repeat of that famous day at Lord’s in 2019 when the action moved to Ahmedabad: instead of shredded nerves there were shredded records, and instead of an England win by the narrowest of margins there was emphatic, unarguable, almost barbaric defeat.
Though many of the players who contested that thrilling final were present again here, it was New Zealand’s newbies who took control. Conway and Rachin Ravindra, whose ODI debuts came in 2021 and this March respectively, did not so much chase their target of 283, they hunted it down. For the short period in which the outcome of this match was in doubt there was no separating them. Their synergy was such that five balls after Ravindra lifted Moeen Ali over midwicket for six to take himself to a half-century off 36 balls, Conway hit Adil Rashid for four to reach his own off precisely the same number of deliveries, and they eventually reached triple figures off 82 and 83 balls respectively. Conway dominated the closing phases of the game to end with 152 off 121, to Ravindra’s 123 off 96.
After five overs New Zealand were 27 for one where England had been 26 without loss, but it was here that the two teams’ paths definitively diverged. In only his ninth ODI innings, at his first World Cup, playing only because of Kane Williamson’s knee injury and arriving at the crease with his team 10 for one, there had been every reason for Ravindra to feel nervous. Instead he took the knife on whose edge the game was briefly balanced, and started slashing.
He was imperious, reeling off a succession of stylish and sweetly timed strikes that rendered England’s fielders irrelevant. At the other end, Conway was better still. The 32-year-old had set the tone in the opening over, hitting a brace of boundaries off Chris Woakes. Woakes, England’s opening-overs specialist, was hit out of the attack after delivering just three and leaking 27 runs. Mark Wood replaced him, and his first three overs went for 38.
Only one England batter demonstrated anything like the combination of fluency and attacking intent later shown by Conway and Ravindra – and that was Harry Brook, who managed to maintain it for only three balls. Theirs was a line-up crafted with batting depth in mind, and they were forced to plumb the darkest fathoms of it as they toiled in the afternoon heat.
They started sweetly enough, Jonny Bairstow lifting the second ball of the day over backward square leg for six, but far from being the precursor to an all-out batting assault there would be only half a dozen more maximums to come, and only one in the last 20 overs.
Despite the absence of Lockie Ferguson and Tim Southee, both injury-enforced, New Zealand never allowed any of England’s batters to settle. Those injuries meant the Black Caps had no choice but to explore all available bowling options, but every card they turned was a trump. The excellence of Matt Henry and Trent Boult was hardly surprising – each bowled 10 overs, with one maiden, for 48 runs but Henry won 3-1 on wickets – though Glenn Phillips’s impact was less predictable. The part-time spinner contributed only three overs but took two wickets for the first time in his ODI career, including Joe Root, the batter who anchored the England innings for 33 overs and faced more than twice as many deliveries as any of his teammates.
Root eventually scored 77 before missing a reverse sweep and losing his leg stump, his attacking instincts having been curbed by the regularity with which he was losing batting partners. Root’s partnership with Jos Buttler was the only one to yield more than 40 runs, as England concentrated on laying foundations until the point when they had to shift their focus to simply surviving their 50 overs.
The highlight of England’s innings came in the 17th over, when Brook lifted Ravindra over mid-on for a four, a four and a six in successive deliveries. But having shifted into top gear he instantly stalled, trying the same shot again and this time lifting Ravindra straight to Conway in the deep – giving these two great friends and club teammates a first chance to suggest they might be about to click.
