World Cup 2019: Laws suggest umpires shouldn’t have awarded England six runs on overthrow

It was the best ever World Cup final. It took the most boundaries hit by a team to decide the 2019 World Cup champions. New Zealand and England gave it all on Sunday at Lord’s and the fans witnessed one of the craziest ODI games ever. The match went down to super over and even tied only for England to be crowned the World Champions. But the laws now suggest that an umpiring error led to the hosts tying the game which the Kiwis should’ve won by 1 run.

In the last over, England needed 15 runs to win and Trent Boult was handed over the ball by his skipper Kane Williamson. The drama unfolded off the fourth delivery of the over when England needed 9 runs. Ben Stokes clubbed the full toss to deep mid-wicket and took off for a second run taking on Martin Guptill’s throw. However, strangely, Stokes in his dive, unintentionally, deflected the ball to the boundary with his bat.

At such a crucial moment in the game, the deflected overthrow added six runs to England’s total when either Stokes should’ve been run-out or only two runs should’ve been completed. The umpires consulted each other before signalling six runs to the scorer.

Did umpires make a glaring mistake?

Well, the umpiring was under the scanner for the whole World Cup and in the final, both Kumar Dharmasena and Marais Erasmus had already given a couple of poor decisions. And they might have just robbed off New Zealand a World Cup if the cricketing laws are taken into consideration.

According to law Law 19.8, pertaining to “Overthrow or willful act of fielder” states: If the boundary results from an overthrow or from the willful act of a fielder, the runs scored shall be any runs for penalties awarded to either side, and the allowance for the boundary, and the runs completed by the batsmen, together with the run in progress if they had already crossed at the instant of the throw or act.

Accordingly, the second run which Ben Stokes and Adil Rashid ran shouldn’t have been counted. The batsmen had crossed each other for the second run when Guptill threw the ball. Now only the International Cricket Council could respond to this confusion and if it is a mistake, then what a huge moment it was and it will be in a cricket game ever!