Epic final defines a triumphant World Cup – will it spark a cricket revival?

It is a phrase that is usually painfully glib or laden with irony but for once it may be appropriate: perhaps cricket really was the winner. The audience beyond, thankfully enlarged, as well as those crammed into every nook and cranny of Lord’s, watched a melodrama that left everyone gasping. Spectators eventually filed out of the old ground stunned by what they had just witnessed, enthralled and exhausted.

The last hour at Lord’s was complicated, yet there seemed to be women and children present who found it utterly captivating. The result may not have been just but that is often the nature of sport. The ricochet from Ben Stokes’s bat in the final over of the longer match was a freak occurrence, a deus ex machina that no self‑respecting playwright would dare to introduce. Never have I seen that happen with the game on a knife-edge. Without those four extra runs England would have needed seven to win, six to tie, from two balls: not impossible, but not very likely.

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Every English cricketer would have known that. It was a moment that subsequently demanded humility and compassion from their side. Meanwhile the Kiwis, whose resilience and resolve in the field was breathtaking, can only be commended for their grace in what the scorecard somehow decrees to be a defeat.

That climax will define this World Cup: the one with the Stokes deflection and the super over, which ended with Jos Buttler diving at the stumps in the manner of Jonty Rhodes in the 1992 tournament, the one when the Kiwis demonstrated to the world at large how to respond to a ridiculous, undeserved defeat. It would be wonderful if it was the one that triggered a revival of interest in cricket in this country. But don’t count on that.

The match at Lord’s had everything that will not be present in the Hundred. There was a context; it was a contest whose outcome really mattered, that will be remembered for decades; it was not difficult to identify the teams and what they stood for. There was time for the game to breathe, to ebb and flow before it reached its astonishing crescendo. There were not many sixes, four in total plus the unforgettable one off the back of Stokes’s bat but somehow it still kept us all awake.

It was a brilliant advert for the game but someone had better inform new viewers – and, glory be, there might have been quite a lot of them on Sunday – that it is not always like this. The Hundred, which is the next cricket scheduled for free-to-air television, may not be like this either. But don’t rule out the marketing men and women of the England and Wales Cricket Board telling us that this will be the case before too long. The final highlighted the bleeding obvious: that the pinnacle of the game should, on special occasions, be available to a wider audience rather than an unloved, hare-brained scheme dreamt up in a vacant boardroom. The biggest audience warrants the best cricket – not a wild, unproven gamble that may well make the game look stupid.

Maybe this is not the time to complain about the Hundred. The myopic sleepwalk in that direction, with barely a murmur from the counties who are denied hosting any matches – they will take the dosh instead, thank you very much – allied to the tacit support of ECB employees and the influential pundits, who must remain loyal to their paymasters, is more or less complete. Instead it may be time to hail our all-conquering cricket team, brilliantly led by Eoin Morgan and self-effacingly nurtured by Trevor Bayliss. Yet even that feels inappropriate after the epic at Lord’s. We could just as easily be lamenting a missed opportunity but for the ricochet.

The New Zealanders demand as many superlatives for their resolve and their capacity to compete even though their resources are so much thinner in terms of funding and depth of talent. Yet again they have maximised their talents brilliantly with Kane Williamson, all quirky calmness, calling the shots along the way. He even won applause from the press corps on Sunday night, something that never happens, for the way he responded to New Zealand’s “loss”. The victors had the spoils, but the glory belonged to New Zealand.

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So somehow this may not be the moment to hail England’s heroes too vigorously. Soon they may be venerated with Morgan our 21st‑century Bobby Moore and Jos Buttler our ice‑cool Jonny Wilkinson at the end of a compelling contest. An amazing transformation has taken place. In four years England have gone from talking a good game to playing a good game. Morgan has moulded a tight-knit group of players from a wide variety of backgrounds into an exciting, dynamic team. In the end they needed a huge slice of good fortune to prevail. But they did it. And a good chunk of the nation had a chance to fall in love with cricket again.

Both teams will be responsible for the 2019 World Cup being hailed a triumph. Forget the agonising about the rain, the pitches or a format comprising just 10 nations, the tournament will be remembered for an astonishing final in front of packed stands. Of course, it is not so difficult to sell a final which is why it has been so uplifting to attend matches from Taunton to Chester-le-Street, where the stands have been heaving with fans of Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and, of course, India: noisy, passionate and cheerful even when the rain poured down. There was never a match when we lamented acres of empty white bucket seats.

There have been brilliant performances from predictable sources such as Mitchell Starc, David Warner, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Shakib Al Hasan. A few less familiar faces have made their mark: Lockie Ferguson, Babar Azam, Sheldon Cottrell, Avishka Fernando and Mujeeb ur Rahman. But they were all overshadowed by a final that will live in the memory for years and Kane Williamson saying, “one of those things, eh?” at the end of it all.