Magical end to Cricket World Cup final not certain to inspire next generation

Sunday: England win Cricket World Cup in the most thrilling possible manner. Monday: a friend who teaches PE goes in to work vowing to ensure all his lessons that day focus on cricket in an attempt to ride the wave of euphoria.

Feeling good that, for once at the start of a week, his pupils are likely to be more energised than normal, he asks his first class what they watched the previous day.

But rather than a sea of raised hands and the word “cricket” being bellowed by the excited children, they basically looked at him in slightly puzzlement that he should be remotely interested in what they did on Sunday.

When prompted, one or two mentioned they had seen the final, and that was a pattern that was repeated throughout the day, leaving the teacher slightly deflated but also wondering why such an amazing event had passed so many of the youngsters by, even though it had been free to view on Channel 4.

There is no single correct answer. Traditionalists will argue the absence of cricket from non-subscription channels for 14 years has starved children of exposure to the game, and that vanishing facilities to play the game is not helping matters.

There is a logic to the TV angle, and it is a problem that is not confined to cricket, as rights-holders battle with the dilemma of how much long-term damage they inflict as they maximise short-term profits by selling pictures to niche subscription channels.

Against that, when you look at participation in grass-roots football, numbers have shrunk alarmingly throughout the period that the amount of matches screened live has mushroomed.

And while you can walk the streets of our cities and be as like to stumble across a porcupine as a place to play cricket, there is a healthy junior scene that suggests the supply of players and fans has not completely dried up.

Perhaps the real reason so few kids were inspired by what happened at Lord’s is that it was a sunny day, it was not particularly well publicised that the game was free to see and, most of all, there was no indication that the incredible climax was in the offing.

Let’s be frank here, this was the equivalent of the 1979 FA Cup final, which was a dull affair that suddenly came alive late on, when Manchester United, 2-0 down with four minutes to play, hauled themselves level only for Arsenal to pull themselves off the canvas and scoring a last-gasp winner through Alan Sunderland.

England and New Zealand had been involved in an attritional battle featuring little in the way of spectacular cricket until the mayhem of the last couple of overs and then the 12-ball tiebreaker.

Here’s another problem with engagement among those who are not already hooked on cricket: it was not entirely obvious what was happening.

It should have been, with each team getting an extra six balls apiece and the one scoring most runs winning. But the weird existence of an almost random criterion for separating the teams if the super overs finished level - most boundaries scored during the 50 overs - removed clarity from the situation.

It was roughly 10-1 that the Super Over would finish all-square so there is no valid reason why they should not have repeated the process until it had ended.

Still, the final and the tournament as a whole were superb and will hopefully have encouraged some children to pick up a bat even if the early signs at one particular school were not entirely promising.

And if any new recruits to the game want a proper education in how to play the game as effectively as possible, they should be shown a video of what turned out to be the key moment of the final, namely the final ball of the New Zealand innings.

Jofra Archer banged it in short to Mitchell Santner, who instead of swinging at it in a bid to extend the Kiwis’ total, which stood at an unimpressive 241, ducked out of the way. That was bad enough but he and Trent Boult compounded the problem by failing to attempt a run.

They may well have failed but it would not have mattered one iota given the number of wickets lost was not a factor in how the match would be decided.

It has long been one of this column’s many bugbears that batsmen do not just keep running off the final delivery of a one-day innings until such time as one of them is run out. It is inexcusable not to do so and on this occasion it cost New Zealand the World Cup.

A few other thoughts on what was a brilliant tournament:

• Bowlers found a way to avoid being mere cannon fodder for one-day batsmen, bucking the recent trend. They were helped by the 10.30am starts but this was not quite the runsfest many had expected.
• The new format, with the minnows largely cast aside, worked extremely well and will hopefully be persevered with.
• India, having looked superb in their early games, limped out of the tournament in pathetic fashion, having turned from free scorers to a Chris Tavare tribute act. That will surely be that for MS Dhoni, who has become MS Slow-ni.
• The commentary cadre, drawn from around the world, served to show just how superb Sky’s regular team is. Thankfully, when the final was being decided, the magnificent Nasser Hussain and Ian Smith were in the gantry to provide a suitably spectacular narrative to the drama.

All in all, then, cricket did itself proud over the 45 enthralling days, and hopefully the game will flourish in the coming years because it remains a key part of the sporting landscape.

Netball World Cup another summer success

There has been so much great sport since the Champions League final that it has been a long time since I have pined for the return of domestic football as little as I have this summer.

As well as the cricket and women’s football World Cups there has been loads of terrific action and there are two ongoing events that will do a great job bridging the gap until it is time to focus on football again.

The Tour de France is still in the balance and will provide hours of fascination until it concludes on Sunday week, while the netball World Cup is proving a real delight even though it appears well down the bill on the summer of sport posters.

Around 20 years ago I took the view if it was possible to trade shares in sport you would clean up by buying cycling, and now I’d want to invest in netball, which is not a new sport by any means but might just be about to take a big jump in profile.

As well as being very much on Barry Hearn’s radar, netball’s popularity rose last summer when Helen Housby’s last-second winner against Australia in the Commonwealth Games final was voted as the moment of the year during the Sports Personality show.

Between now and Sunday we will discover whether Tracey Neville’s Roses can repeat the feat and add the World Cup crown, and if you have yet to sample the action, which is being expertly broadcast by Sky Sports, I recommend you do.

Netball is a fast-moving sport that tests athleticism, stamina and teamwork, has a better scoring cadence than basketball and punches above its weight in terms of generating exciting finishes.

Bruce faces tough test at Toon

It was the intention to avoid football talk in the column for a while, but then Newcastle appointed Steve Bruce as manager and, well, you can’t really let that one through to the keeper, can you?

The cricket analogy is apt, given Bruce kept his most recent employer, Sheffield Wednesday, waiting while he went to the West Indies last winter to watch England.

At the time I thought that was less of a liberty than many others did on the basis he had promised his father-in-law he would take him and that football people don’t always get the opportunity to put family first.

But having patiently waited for him to start work, Wednesday are entitled to feel miffed that the gaffer has fled back to his north-east roots upon the St James’s Park job having become vacant.

Managers are on the receiving end of the sport’s lack of loyalty often enough so perhaps Bruce has every right to go and manage his hometown club, but a more significant question is what were Newcastle thinking of when choosing him?

He has become a journeyman operator and if he did not originate from Tyneside he would almost certainly not have been remotely close to getting the job and the fans would have wondered what on earth was going on.

One has to be careful when criticising what appear to be poor appointments. Many a writer will cringe when they look back at how vociferous there were at the time that Southampton jettisoned Nigel Adkins and replaced him with some bloke called Mauricio Pochettino, while Newcastle themselves were vindicated in time after swapping Chris Hughton for Alan Pardew.

But Bruce to Newcastle looks a woeful piece of recruitment and it is no wonder the Magpies’ relegation odds have melted to a general 9-4.

They were 6-1 to go down the day after the Championship playoff decider finalised the 2019-20 Premier League line-up, since when not only has Rafa Benitez departed but also Ayoze Perez, one of their few star performers last term.

At 9-4 the ship has probably sailed, but this looks like being an enormously stressful season for Newcastle fans, who will quickly fail to give a damn where the manager was born if early results are unfavourable.

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