Nineteen off six

West Indies were eleven for three in the third over of the 2016 World T20 final. Johnson Charles, Chris Gayle and Lendl Simmons had all gone, two of them to Joe Root, who is not a bowler.

They needed 156 to win a World Cup.

The rebuild nobody remembers

Marlon Samuels walked in during the second over and stayed until the end. He and Dwayne Bravo added 75. Bravo was caught off Adil Rashid in the fourteenth, Andre Russell went in the sixteenth, and Daren Sammy, the captain, went two balls later.

West Indies were 107 for six with 49 needed from 27 balls, and Carlos Brathwaite walked out to join Samuels.

Brathwaite had already had a good evening. He had taken 3 for 23, Buttler and Root among them, and was the reason England made only 155. Nobody was thinking about his batting. He averaged in the low twenties. He had faced six deliveries all match.

The seventh-wicket stand added 50 in 25 balls. Nineteen were needed from the last over.

Six balls

Eoin Morgan gave the over to Ben Stokes, and the card shows why. Willey, Jordan, Plunkett and Rashid had each bowled their full four. Root had bowled one. The only men left with overs in hand were a part-time off-spinner and Stokes, and Stokes was the fast bowler.

It was not a gamble. It was the last option that looked like a plan.

Brathwaite hit the first ball for six over long-on. He hit the second for six over long-off. He hit the third for six over midwicket. He hit the fourth for six over long-on again, and West Indies had won with two balls to spare.

Stokes went down on his haunches on the square and stayed there. He was twenty-four.

Full scorecard: England v West Indies, World T20 final, Eden Gardens, 3 April 2016 →

The numbers nobody quotes

Brathwaite finished 34 not out from 10 balls: one four, four sixes, a strike rate of 340.

Stokes’s figures read 2.4–0–41–0. Twenty-four of those runs came off four consecutive deliveries.

Samuels was 85 not out from 66 and was named player of the match, which was correct and which almost nobody remembers. He had come in with the score at 5 for two and was still there at the end. The innings that won the tournament and the four balls that ended it were played by different men, and only one of them is in the highlight reel.

How close England came

England were 110 for four in the fourteenth over and then lost three wickets for one run: Stokes at 110, Moeen Ali two balls later at 110, Root at 111 off the first ball of the next over. From 155 for nine they were saved by David Willey, who made 21 from 14 at the death.

Those last 44 runs are the reason the target was 156 rather than 130, and nobody has ever mentioned them again.

Where it happened

Eden Gardens, Kolkata. The same ground where a World Cup semi-final was abandoned in flames twenty years earlier, and the loudest place the sport puts a cricketer.

England had been the better side for most of the match. Root made 54 from 36 after England were 23 for three. David Willey took 3 for 20. Root himself bowled a single over for nine and took two wickets. Almost every individual performance in the final belonged to England.

What is not explained

Nineteen from six is not impossible in a Twenty20 and it is not routine either. What the card records is that a bowler who had conceded nine from twelve deliveries then conceded twenty-four from four, to a batter with a Test-match average and one previous scoring shot in the game.

Stokes has spoken about it since, often and without evasion, and the honest version is that the yorkers did not come out. There is no tactical account that survives contact with the footage; nothing about the field, the ball or the plan explains four consecutive deliveries in the same slot.

Six balls were scheduled. Four were bowled. A World Cup was decided by the two that were not needed.

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No. 1 in The Over That Turned It, a series of 1.

TomorrowFour in four, and it was not an over