I missed a wicket.

Just when you think you've seen it all.

A brilliant day today.

That was proper intense. Blood pressure through the roof stuff...

I missed the action on Sunday (just too much to watch on a lovely sunny day - what with Wimbledon, the Grand Prix and the Bastille Day stage of Le Tour - and the backyard beckoning strongly) but, having read the reports, I caught up yesterday evening with a highlights package. What a game - and what a finish! After the first-ever Championship Tie-Break in the tennis, to have a cricket world cup decided on a count-back seems somewhat fitting. And Hamilton won at Silverstone, and Geraint Thomas is in second place on the Tour, with Frenchman Julian Alaphilippe wearing yellow on Bastille Day. A good weekend.

I don't know what to think of the pundit-driven controversy over the "extra run" incident. Immediate thought is that the umpires made a decision, and in the subsequent deliveries the result of that ruling will have affected the decision-making of both bowlers and batsmen, so there's no telling what might have happened if it had gone the other way.

Exactly this.
It seems an odd rule, anyway, requiring the batsman to have crossed at the time of the throw. Why? If the ball hadn't hit the bat and he was 'in' then both batsmen would have been in (with there being no time to get the ball at the other end) with the second run having counted. I don't see why not crossing at the time of the throw has relevance.

But, yes, even had only 5 been added rather than 6, then a successful boundary attempt or a couple of twos would have won the game without the super over.

Even had it not reached the boundary and remained as only 2 runs, NZ may have sensed victory and subsequently maybe bowled/fielded a little more loosely.

Oink and anyone else- dunno what sources you usually use but I've just been watching on DAZN. I didn't know it was going to be on.

Having signed up for the Prem and Champs League footie this is a bonus.

Wow! Did you see that this morning Oink? Not the shite Spurs performance but Stokesy before it?

I wasn't a fan of DAZN but now I have test cricket again I'm warming up to it.

That Ben Stokes performance was the finest by an England player in my 31 years of watching Cricket. England's best win since 2005.

I couldn't believe how quickly Stokesy rattled off the last 70 odd runs either. What a player and what a performance!

Check out Stokes' reverse sweep 6 at 3mins17secs!

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I was just beginning to get annoyed hearing that awful filler 'music' on DAZN between the two footie matches and I thought, I know, let's see if we lost the cricket yet...not having checked it during play yesterday, expecting the worst.



Edge of seat stuff. Lightning strikes twice. What a season after being on the front pages for the wrong reasons.

Ok... So let's be a little controversial.
England deserved to have lost and should have. Why?
Because, in rugby,and any number of other 'team' games, there are 'specialists' whose job it is to perform specialised tasks.
We don't expect goalkeepers in soccer to bound up the field to score the winning goal. They could but that isn't what they're there for.
So when Stokes, rated as an all rounder, has to do the business because those whose job it was to secure victory failed so emphatically demonstrates what a shambles of a batting lineup the england squad has.
It's long past time that england selectors sacked themselves en masse and made way for others who might, just might, be able to do a better job in picking the very best because it's about time that doing their job was put before choosing what wine to drink with lunch.
But they'll get in yet another case of bubbly, lauding Stokes, and his equally laudable tail end partners, as part of their plan all along and give themselves a collective pat on the back saying 'Didn't we do a good job picking Stokes' instead of 'Who picked these wastes of space we put into bat first?'.