Hello and welcome to Stumped, your intercontinental hit of news, features, and debate from the quirky world of cricket.
I'm Alison Mitchell in London and England's men hold the 50-over World Cup crown and also
now the T20 World Cup after the tournament reached its climax at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground last weekend.
I wouldn't say the country stopped for the final.
I think many factors around that - it made the sports news, not the main news, so much.
I think even when Ben Stokes was asked: How does it compare to 2019?
He was, I think, he was realistic that 2019 was the really big one.
But for the cricket fans, it was a victory to savour.
England's men's team in white-ball, all conquering now and an absolute victory to savour.
G day, Brett Sprigg in Sydney, but there's still a lot to happen here in Australia.
The Test matches are around the corner, the Women's Big Bash League wraps up, the men's
one dayers against England off the back of that World Cup win and I've got about four
or five different accreditation passes that I have to take to the various competitions
and grounds and trying to remember which pass to take on any given day when you're so busy
covering all these different events, it can be tricky, but it is a good problem to have.
Alison, I haven't seen you smile that wide in a long, long time.
Congratulations. This is Charu Sharma for Bangalore.
I'm back home after a wonderful trip to Melbourne with some bragging rights, by the way, because
our all-Mayo team beat the all-Wesley team to retain the silverware.
A special mention for Rick Morris, the captain of the all-Wesley cricket team because he
was so fabulously hospitable, almost like an Indian and so that's what we called him now.
But I know we've got bigger things to talk about, a slightly different grade of cricket, but we had a wonderful trip.
Alison, the one reason that maybe didn't make too much news in England is because you still
have to get used to the concept that there are 120 balls in another grade of cricket.
Sounds like you had a great time in Melbourne, Charu.
Undoubtedly you would've had Brett, and I'll be seeing you in Australia very soon. Good to have you on the show.
I'll be back over to work on the Test summer for ABC, so looking forward to that.
There is only one place we can start this week's show and that is the incredible final
that saw England's men win the T20 World Cup, beating Pakistan by five wickets at the MCG
to become double world champions.
Chasing 138, they did look in a bit of trouble England at 84-4.
But Ben Stokes was the match winner once again, like he was in the 2019 50-over World Cup
final and his inspiring 52 guided England to victory. He was unbeaten.
Earlier this week, I caught up with Tymal Mills, who was part of the England squad and
asked him what it feels like to have come home with a World Cup winner's medal.
First of all, it s great to be home.
I was on a flight pretty much six hours, seven hours after the final.
I had something to get to get home for, but yeah, it's been great thank you.
It's nice to be home. It was a great kind of six weeks, really.
It was something that I'm sure I'll look back up on in months and years to come really fondly.
Obviously, the cricket went well and I was able to win the tournament, but as a group
we had a really, really good six weeks with a great group of lads both on and off the
pitch and obviously it's even better when you go all the way and win it.
Well, tell me about your experience of being away from home when... it's a little boy, isn't it? When your son was born.
Yeah, I had a little boy when we were in Perth, so he was born the day or two days before
the first group match against Afghanistan. It was tricky.
I had a lot of well wishes from the boys, which was great.
But, yeah, it was strange.
I was just sat in my hotel room in Perth just waiting for my mother-in-law to call me to
say everything had kind of gone on and everything was fine, which it was, which was great.
And you feel a bit helpless and a bit useless and from the next few days, I'm just wanting
to call all the time and things.
Understandably, my wife was a bit out of it for a few days and struggling along with the
baby, but I'm glad to be home. It was nice to meet my son when I got home and at least we brought
him home a World Cup winner's medal.
You were playing a supporting role during the World Cup, perhaps came close to playing
when there was the injury to Mark Wood towards the end of it.
What sort of approach mentality do you need to take when you're not in the XI at the forefront
of matches in a World Cup like this?
The team's doing well, so tell us about that role and how you have to approach that to
remain motivated and to still be a really important part of the squad.
It's tricky and I'm sure every player would agree, you don't grow up or don't have dreams
and aspirations of being on the bench when your team wins the World Cup.
We all grow up and dream of hitting the winning runs, taking the wickets, taking the catches
that win games of cricket and win tournaments and I'm no different in that respect.
I would have loved to be out there playing and contributing on the field, but it wasn't
meant to be for myself and David Willey, who didn't get a game either.
But as I mentioned at the start of the interview, we've got such a great group.
You really do share kind of success with everybody else. I know it can be a bit of a cliche and people might not believe that.
But you really did care for one another and even though Dave and I and Chris Jordan, who
were initially out of the team, we genuinely did feel part of the XI, even though we weren't in it.
But, yeah, we just trained hard. We trained and obviously prepared to play every game and you need to be ready should
an opportunity come up. When Woody unfortunately got injured, it was obviously going to be one of CJ, myself or
Dave that came into the XI and they obviously they went for CJ and that worked out well.
There are no qualms there.
We just trained really hard, and I guess the only bad bit about it is that we have to be
running after the after the games have finished....
We didn't in the final, we certainly weren't running shuttles after the final
at the MCG, but after every game, we had to do a running session to get obviously some
miles in the legs, but it was all good fun.
Just relived for us the final passage of the tournament because a lot of players often
say it's harder when you can't affect what is happening out in the middle.
What was it like for you and the rest of the team watching Ben Stokes help the side get over the line?
It was a nervous bench. Obviously, Pakistan bowled really well, and we bowled really well at the start, so to
chase 130 odd, we were very confident of chasing it.
We knew he had to go out there and do a job, but obviously we lost an early wicket when
Alex Hales got out and then credit to Pakistan, they bowled really well.
I thought Naseem Shah bowled one of the better wicketless spells that you're likely to see.
He bowled some really good balls. The ball was nipping around quite a bit, the pitch was quite spicy, which as a bowler you
like to see. It got closer than what we would have liked it to have.
It was one of those where you'd love to knock it off in the 17th over, or something like that.
It got a little bit nippy towards the end.
Adil Rashid came and sat next to me on the bench and he really couldn't look, bless him.
He had a lot of nervous energy, so I was just trying to be there for him, just to kind of
keep him level, cos he was up and down.
He had members of the coaching staff kind of getting... you could tell there was a definite
shift on the bench, there was a different atmosphere than there was in the group games,
obviously, with it being such a massive game.
There were more nerves on the bench than the normal, but I like to pride myself and think
I'm quite calm, level character.
So, I tried to try my best to keep everybody is as level as I could around my little area on the bench.
Adil took a little bit of calming down more so than usual.
And a final thought, how do you see the relationship between Jos Buttler and Matthew Mott since
they have come together and the way that they both go about things?
Is Jos more the leader when it comes to the overall who's in charge?
How has that relationship and how did that play out over the course of the tournament?
I think it has peaked at the right time. I think we had a rough start in the summer.
We lost quite a few games to India and South Africa with different make-ups of the teams and things as well.
I read that Jos mention that time they spent in Pakistan was obviously key to... I wasn't
there, I was coming back from injury, but the team and I'm sure for the kind of relationship
between those two and the staff as well.
I certainly see Jos as the leader of the side in a similar way that Eoin Morgan was as well.
I'm sure Jos has been finding his particular way to kind of go about it and settle into it.
As I mentioned earlier, I can't speak enough of the environment that was created.
Even though we had quite a few Australians in the coaching staff with Mike Hussey and
David Saker there. We had a really good time.
Obviously, it helps that we were doing well at the cricket side of it.
That obviously made things a lot easier, but for six weeks we thoroughly enjoyed everybody's
company and then we were just constantly reminded Jos kept saying how good we are and how we
have some of the best players in the world.
And if we would perform close to our potential in every game that we play, then not many teams can live with us.
So Jos just kept bringing it back to that, and I think that that kind of went through
to the to the rest of the boys.
Congratulations again, Tymal and enjoy the time at home.
Good luck with those night feeds.
Thank you very much, cheers.
Great to have you on Stumped.
Brett, we haven't had you on Stumped since the... during the World Cup, even, so I'm intrigued
to see what you made of the tournament as a whole. You've been at a lot of the matches.
Yeah. England, obviously deserved winners.
I thought our semi-finals while, perhaps lacking in competitiveness delivered two emphatic
performances which built to an intriguing final.
Obviously, in the end, Pakistan left about 15-20 runs out there, which was the difference in the end.
England deserves that bit of history. What I love about this event...
I guess there was disappointment, collectively, about Australia's team and Australia's crowds and the wash outs as well.
But everyone's got different theories as to why the Australian public seems to have gone
a bit cold on the Australian men's cricket team, whether it's some long-term fallout
from Cape Town or Justin Langer's departure and the way that was handled or Pat Cummins
having a social or environmental conscience.
People have their own ideas about that, but this World Cup was about every other team.
The crowds for India were amazing, obviously. We expect that.
I haven't seen Pakistan fans take over a stadium in quite the way they did.
We saw it on smaller scales with Afghanistan and Bangladesh as well.
This was a celebration of different cultures, and the first time in a few years we've had the chance to do that.
This was extraordinary, seeing a lot of our first- and second-generation Australians supporting their country of origin.
And lots of travellers of course, as well, which really brought the atmosphere to this World Cup.
That was the highlight for me.
Charu on that final, it was a real turning point, wasn't it when Shaheen Shah Afridi went off injured for Pakistan?
For sure. I think Brett's mention a very important point earlier on as we all know they were at least
15-20, if not more, runs short.
So, to try and defend a total that's barely just over a run a ball, it has to be an extraordinary
bowling effort and we know that Pakistan, especially fast bowlers and Shadab as well,
did have a fabulous bowling line up.
But, a little bit of desperation does come in once in a while, seeps in because you need
a wicket virtually every second over because if you don't get the wickets, somebody is going to make the other side enough.
In a final, it's certainly going to make 130 and change because there's an area of pressure.
Yes, we know that talisman made a half century once again.
To Pakistan's credit, they defended that low total with as much zeal as possible and you are right.
If Shaheen Shah Afridi, who is their spearhead and who, of course came in with an injury
and then got fairly fit enough to play a few games.
Had he stayed on for the last one or two overs, who knows because if Stokes had gone, then
as Tymal Mills mentioned, there was a lot of nerves in the dugout and the death overs
could easily have gone Pakistan's way.
So, a reasonable defence of a very low total, but it was never going to be enough.
When we were recording the show last week, it was in the middle of that England, India
semi-final, wasn't it, which feels like eons ago now already.
What's been the fall out in India to that, because it was a remarkable victory for England
with the flip side being India were well beaten.
Sorry, what match again? Yeah, I mean more than despair.
There's always disappointment losing match and losing it really badly is what sets the
critics and gives them a platform, a throne, and the criticism was massive across India.
We've got about 1.4 billion selectors and each one was out with his or her own selection.
Why is so and so and why not so and so and all that.
But I'm sorry, I'm being idealistic here but you need support your team, regardless.
The best fifteen or so went to represent India in the T20 World Cup in Australia.
I suppose the only person who got away scot free was Virat Kohli, because he did have
a fabulous T20 World Cup campaign, despite the fact that for the past three years he
has got a lot of criticism of not having done very much at all.
But that criticism was pretty excessive, and one has to just understand the critics viewpoint
because you would like a close match. And we got smashed.
A ten-wicket loss is very tough to bear for even the staunchest fan.
Michael Vaughan has been quite outspoken, as he often is, the former England captain
saying that he sees that the Indian team as the most underperforming team in white-ball history.
They did they did win the first T20 World Cup of course, which spawned the IPL.
But what did you make of their performance?
I think in much the same way we marvel at associate nations and talk about how they punch above their weight.
Here we have a cricket superpower with seemingly unlimited resources and capability that has
not won a major trophy since 2011.
It is a hard thing to define or explain, Charu, and I'd probably yield to your expertise here.
But in ordnance, you talk about teams that neglect their traditional pathways in favour
of commerce and the money, expanding that franchise league.
But, I think in this case, the continued expansion of the IPL, continued growth of the IPL and
IPL clubs will help India to its next World Cup sooner rather than later.
You have more talent scouts, more opportunity to find the next Jasprit Bumrah, the next
Hardik Pandya, and those players will still make their way into the Indian system.
I guess the one thing you can't buy is mindset, and at various times in those big games India just forgot how to play cricket.
They abandoned their attacking mindset and looked a little too defensive or tentative,
but India is a proud and patriotic country.
Someone will figure out how to shake off that chokers tag, if you like, in big events and galvanise...
Well, that might be a word that gets thrown around, but there would be a thought that
they haven't capitalised in the business end of big tournaments, but that's not too far away.
The most obvious comparison, Alison, is the English Premier League football.
I can't remember England winning the World Cup after World Cup of football and despite
the fact that their commercial circles in football are massive, humungous, more than
the IPL. Very true.
Money doesn't guarantee anything. There are lots of fabulous players.
You have one bad match in a knockout stage. You're out of a tournament.
It's happened to all the best countries. England included.
They didn't win the World Cup for ages, if you remember the ODI World
Cup and everyone's saying well England can't win the world and they go and eventually they did.
And Australia, too. I mean, they were out a lot earlier.
So, Brett, they are probably the best team in the world on any given day.
And yet, they didn t even make the semis.
So, what right does India, and 1.4 billion people expect India to win every T20 match they play in.
Of course, if you have to win World Cups, you probably have to win just about every T20 match you play in.
So that's unfair, in terms of expectation. I think they're still a pretty good team.
They could have won the World Cup. One better match in the semi-finals, who knows.
Because England too, if you go back and look at the Irish loss and you were talking about Alison.
I mean, at that stage, I'm sure the English critics were saying what kind of team have
we sent to Australia, and you go on and win. You say: "What a team!"
Well, it'd be a boring landscape if one team dominated and won everything.
In the women's game, everyone's crying out for Australia to be challenged at the top
because they have been winning everything for so many years, but yep, you're absolutely
right about the England football team, Charu. Let's see what happens in Qatar.
Well, that's all we've got time for on this week's Stumped on All India Radio.
Don't forget you can follow us on Twitter, we're @WSSport and use #BBCStumped so we see
your message and check us out on Youtube as well. Go to the BBC World Service's Youtube channel.
You'll find us there. Thanks to Charu Sharma and Brett Sprigg and to all of you.
See you next week. Bye. Bye.