New Zealand’s defeat to England in the 2019 World Cup final is one of the most heartbreaking things one could have ever felt while watching the game of cricket.
You play good cricket, you get the other team all out, scores are tied after 100 overs, a Super Over is played for the first time in the history of ODI cricket and scores are again tied after the Eliminator and there you are standing at the iconic Lord’s Cricket Ground with bare hands only to see someone else lift the coveted trophy because his team smashed more boundaries (26) in their innings than your team could (17). The thrilling final wasn’t a T20 game or a T10 game that would force players to go all gun blazing right from the start. It was a vintage ODI game like we saw the ones in the 90s, where the two teams struggled to score even 250 despite playing on batting-friendly pitches.
The manner in which the outcome of the World Cup final was decided has earned the Black Caps immense sympathy and support from fans around the globe. A number of fans even went on to opine that the prestigious trophy should have been shared between the two teams judging by the tie in the Super Over while many lashed out at the International Cricket Council (ICC) demanding a change in the rules.
NZ skipper Kane Williamson, however, doesn’t seem to have gotten over the loss as he compared it to a “bad dream” and spoke about how he was tackling it in an interview with ESPNCricinfo.
“I sort of explained it to a few people, it’s like sort of hits you in waves. You feel like, 10 minutes, you forget about it and then you make little jokes and then it comes back to you and you go… ‘that just happened’ and ‘did that just happen’. ‘Is that real’. I woke up wondering if it was just a bad dream and it wasn’t, was it?” Williamson was quoted as saying.
"I woke up wondering if it was a bad dream."
Kane Williamson on his emotions after losing the #CWC19 final by the finest of margins. pic.twitter.com/UmFu8hnNQX
— ESPNcricinfo (@ESPNcricinfo) July 16, 2019
Former South African skipper AB De Villiers, who suffered a similar heartbreak by the hands of New Zealand in the 2015 World Cup semi-final, has now responded to Williamson’s comment.
“I know the feeling,” he replied.
I know the feeling😳
— AB de Villiers (@ABdeVilliers17) July 17, 2019
De Villiers, who announced his retirement from international cricket a year before the 2019 World Cup, has time and again regarded the defeat to New Zealand four years back as the greatest disappointment of his cricketing career. The 35-year-old is pretty aware of how it feels to lose a World Cup which was pretty evident in his reply for the Kiwi skipper.
