The man who faced nothing

Adil Rashid’s line in the 2019 World Cup final reads: run out, 0 runs, 0 balls, 7 minutes.

He was on the field for seven minutes, faced nothing, scored nothing, and is central to the most disputed passage of play in the history of the tournament.

Why he was out there

England were 227 for eight when Jofra Archer was bowled with six balls left. Rashid walked out to join Ben Stokes with fifteen needed and one recognised batsman in the ground.

His instruction was the simplest in cricket: get to the other end when Stokes tells you to, and do not get out.

He was run out at 240 attempting the first of those things, off the fifth ball of the final over, having never received one.

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

The delivery in between

One ball earlier, Stokes had driven to deep midwicket and set off. They ran two. Martin Guptill threw. The ball struck Stokes’s bat as he dived and ran away for four overthrows.

Kumar Dharmasena signalled six: two run, four overthrown.

Under Law 19.8, the runs already completed are added to the overthrows only if the batsmen have crossed at the instant the fielder releases the ball.

Simon Taufel, who sat on the MCC committee that writes the Laws, has said that Stokes and Rashid had not crossed when Guptill let go. On that reading the award should have been five, and Rashid rather than Stokes should have been on strike for the next delivery.

What the whole thing turns on

Where a man who never faced a ball happened to be standing.

Not what he did. Not a shot, not a call, not a decision.

Where he was relative to another man at one instant, in a moment neither was thinking about. That is the fact the World Cup turned on.

England went on to tie the match, tie the Super Over, and win on boundary count under a rule abolished within a year.

Nought balls

There is no column on a scorecard for the position of the non-striker.

Balls faced, runs, minutes, fours, sixes, strike rate, method of dismissal. All of it describes the man on strike. The other end is recorded only when he is run out, and then only as a result, never as a location.

Rashid’s entire World Cup final is legible in nine characters and the one piece of information that mattered is not among them.

The other man who faced nothing

Mark Wood came in after Rashid, was run out off the last ball of the innings, and finished with 0 from 0 as well.

England’s last two wickets both fell to run-outs, at 240 and 241, off the final two deliveries. Two men walked out to bat in a World Cup final and neither of them received a delivery.

Both are recorded identically. Both are, on the card, indistinguishable from each other and from every other nought in the tournament.

What nobody has settled

Rashid has said almost nothing about it, which is reasonable, because there is nothing for him to say. He was running.

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

So the record contains four agreed things. A decision the man who helped write the Law says was wrong. An umpire who says he could not have checked it. A batsman whose position decided it and who nobody was watching. And a World Cup final.

All four of those things are agreed. Their consequence is unknowable and always will be.

••••••

No. 5 in The Other Guy, a series of 24.

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