Lord’s the perfect venue for greatest one-day game ever played | Andy Bull

Where better for England’s transgenerational trauma to end than the home of cricket, pretty as a picture in the evening sun

The sun was out when England won the World Cup. It had just emerged from behind the freckles of white cloud and was shining low through the bright blue over the Grand Stand. The shadows stretched over the grass all the way to the wicket, the flags licked in the evening breeze, the pavilion glowed soft terracotta. The old place looked pretty as a picture, exactly how we see it in winter, when we are thinking back on the games we saw and the games we played in the long, warm days of summer. For the 11 men in this England team, the thousands in the ground, the millions watching on TV, that is how they will always see it in their minds in years to come when they talk about this match: the greatest World Cup final; heck, maybe even the greatest game of one-day cricket ever played.

The dizzying, sickening, drama of those final minutes were as compelling a stretch of sport as anything else that will happen this year, as gripping as anything, in fact, that has happened in the 14 years since the England cricket team last played live on free-to-air TV back in 2005. Accurate viewing figures are notoriously hard to come by but one imagines that, if Channel 4 ever get hold of theirs for this broadcast, they will be pretty disappointed with them. Because, even though all those sets were on around the country, surely most of the people in front of them were hiding behind their sofas or had their faces buried in a cushion or were taking glimpses from between their fingers, because they were too scared to watch what was going on.

Continue reading…