World Cup 2019: NZ skipper Kane Williamson attributes unlucky final defeat to ‘small margins’
No one would have faulted him if the New Zealand captain had stood up and said this rule doesn’t make sense. Instead, he just tried passing off this defeat to the “small margins, the uncontrollables.”
“Kids, don’t take up sport. Take up baking or something. Die at 60 really fat and happy.” James Neesham’s tweet after the final was in keeping with his usual laconic humour, though perhaps a bit harsh on bakers. But to be able to see the funny side of anything after watching England dance with the World Cup, despite levelling the final twice, needs a rock solid core.
How did New Zealand stay sane, stay on their feet, and not collapse in tears after that level of madness? Maybe they had just gone numb. When Kane Williamson walked in for the press conference, he looked a bit dazed. He was not even sure exactly how or why his team had lost.
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“I don’t know how they won it. What was it, boundaries or something?” He asked. “Someone had to walk away with the title and we’re gutted that it’s not us.”
Williamson was still smiling. Even the toughest sportsmen or women are allowed a tear or two after a heartbreak of this magnitude. New Zealand had shown the battling qualities of Australia, reaching consecutive World Cup finals, but this was last chance salon for most players. Incredible things happened to deny them an almost certain win; most teams would be broken. The Kiwis smiled.
When you consider how the winners were chosen based on a random metric, sudden deaths in football start to seem more humane. Can a boundary count be a fair way of deciding a World Cup final?
“I suppose you never thought you would have to ask that question and I never thought I would have to answer it,” said Williamson. It’s like asking what happens if during a toss the coin lands on its edge. No one likes it, not even the winners.
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“If you could give me an alternative, I’d be able to, like compare the both,” said England captain Eoin Morgan. “But I can’t think of an alternative at the moment. The rules are obviously set out a long time ago and we have no control over them.”
Complaining doesn’t come naturally to Williamson. But no one would have faulted him if the New Zealand captain had stood up and said this rule doesn’t make sense. Instead, he just tried passing off this defeat to the “small margins, the uncontrollables.”
How about luck?
“I guess—‘uncontrollables’ I suppose mean that you can’t control them, can you? So it is up to someone else, I don’t know,” said Williamson.
Even those ‘small margins’ will go down in history as controversial. The press box was divided in opinion when Martin Guptill’s throw from the deep hit Ben Stokes’s bat and took off for a boundary. It was an inadvertent mistake and Stokes showed the courtesy of not running on the overthrow. But he still wasn’t inside the crease when the throw hit his bat. Overthrows are top-ups on completed runs. Stokes hadn’t completed the second run. And yet, six runs were signalled.
To make sense of what Williamson is going through is as difficult as making sense of this defeat. No one lost. And yet one won. What is the losing captain thinking? You want him to pour his heart out. But Williamson did no such thing. He didn’t blast the ICC. He didn’t lash out at the umpires.
A journalist tried to tease Williamson out of this cocoon, telling him that he’s “smart phrases” like “uncontrollable” and “thin margins”.
“Dogs as well, I have used dogs,” Williamson interjected with a laugh, referring to the Kiwis being considered “underdogs”.
There is sorrow, a deep sense of disappointment and that ‘gutted feeling’. But that doesn’t mean the inscrutable New Zealand captain will be a sore loser.
“Laugh or cry, it’s your choice, isn’t it?” Makes sense. Williamson always does.