Six, and it should have been five

England were 86 for four chasing 242 in a World Cup final, which is the sort of position from which the innings normally ends quietly.

Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler put on 110. Buttler went at 196, Chris Woakes at 203, Liam Plunkett at 220, Jofra Archer at 227. Stokes was still there and the target kept not quite going away.

Nine were needed from three balls. Stokes on strike, Adil Rashid at the other end, Trent Boult bowling the last over at Lord’s.

Stokes hit the fourth ball to deep midwicket and set off. They ran two. Martin Guptill picked up and threw.

The deflection

Stokes dived for the crease. The throw hit his bat as he stretched, changed direction, and ran away behind square for four.

Kumar Dharmasena signalled six: two run, four overthrown. Stokes put his hands up in apology, which is what a batter does.

England needed three from two. They got them, the match was tied, and it went to a Super Over.

Fifteen apiece

England made 15 in the Super Over. New Zealand made 15 in reply, Guptill run out going for the second that would have won it, two feet short.

England won on boundary count, 26 to 17.

Full scorecard: England v New Zealand, World Cup final, Lord’s, 14 July 2019 →

Everything else that had to happen

The final turned on a series of things that had to fall a particular way, and the overthrow is only the one that got a name.

Boult had caught Stokes earlier in the innings and stepped on the boundary rope holding the ball. Six instead of out. New Zealand’s last two overs went for 22 and England’s last two wickets both fell to run-outs, at 240 and 241, off the final two deliveries of the innings. Both sides finished on exactly 241.

Boult’s figures for the day read ten overs, no maidens, 67 runs, no wickets.

The point of law

For the completed run to be added to the overthrows, the batters must have crossed at the instant the fielder released the ball.

Simon Taufel, a five-time umpire of the year who sat on the MCC committee that writes the laws, has said Stokes and Rashid had not crossed when Guptill let go. On his reading the award should have been five, not six, and Rashid rather than Stokes should have been on strike for the next delivery.

Four elite-panel officials were involved. Dharmasena and Marais Erasmus stood, Rod Tucker was the television umpire, Aleem Dar was fourth. None of them queried it at the time, and there is no mechanism to review a runs award once play has moved on.

Dharmasena has since said he knew there was a question and had no way to check it. The television umpire can be consulted on a dismissal, a boundary, or a no-ball. He cannot be consulted on whether two men had crossed.

What one run would have changed

Everything and nothing. England would have needed four from two with a different batter facing a different ball, and every delivery after that becomes a different delivery bowled to a different man under different pressure.

The Super Over might not have happened. A match that finished level might not have finished level. This is the honest limit of it: the error is established, acknowledged by someone who helped write the law, and entirely undisputed on the point of law. Its consequence is unknowable.

The total everybody agrees on

Cricket's records are precise to the ball. This one holds a figure of 241, arrived at through a delivery that the person who helped write the law says was scored wrongly, and a tournament decided by counting boundaries because the runs could not separate two teams.

The scorecard has no way to show a disputed run. It shows the total. The total is what the World Cup was decided on, and the rule that decided it was abolished within a year.

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No. 5 in Not Out, a series of 5.

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