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England’s 2019 World Cup winning captain was on hand to commentate on the triumph of team he built with typical clear-minded certainty
Alice was encouraged to believe six impossible things before breakfast; England’s sports viewers had to give credence to but one thing on Sunday morning. Their cricketing men became double world champs; something that would have seemed fantastical when they were defeated by Ireland last month, or when they limped out of the 2015 World Cup in part due to losing to Bangladesh, or when they were beaten by the Netherlands at the T20 World Cups in both 2009 and 2014, or indeed any number of other pyjama-clad fiascos. What would once seem outlandish has now become credible: England are the team to beat in men’s white-ball cricket, and by putting it on Channel 4 as well as Sky Sports, perhaps the sport can share the good news.
Coverage began at 7am and carried on until 1pm on Sky’s channels; Channel 4’s ended a bit earlier so that station could get back in haste to its regular programming of US sitcom repeats, home improvements, and outsized genitals, meaning that anyone who took their eyes off Ian Ward for a second suddenly found him supplanted by Marge Simpson. Unsettling.
Still, there was plenty of space for the celebrations from the MCG, almost everyone in the England XI giving an interview to Ward or Mel Jones. There cannot be many better eggs in elite sport than Jos Buttler and the team seem a likeable bunch as well. It was striking how much they all seemed to admire and look up to Eoin Morgan – Ben Stokes called him “the great man”, Chris Jordan ran over to get him to come for a glass of red wine. This win belonged to him, perhaps, as much as his playing successors.
One imagines Morgan will be a Sky Sports fixture for years to come, pastel blazer and all: his affable manner and air of total, clear-minded certainty suit limited-overs coverage. Someone who had met Morgan told me they had offered him a cup of coffee and Morgan had declined; it emerged as they chatted that not only was Morgan not a drinker of coffee (unremarkable per se) but furthermore that he had never tried the stuff. As in never. Became aware of it as a beverage choice at whatever age, didn’t fancy it, just removed it from his decision-making matrix. Astonishing clarity of purpose; no wonder he was so adept at selecting in split-seconds whether to belt the ball over extra cover or backward point. Perhaps his relative lack of success in Tests was related to the more numerous, foggying permutations; might he end up being a specialist white-ball pundit as well?