Nurture trumps nature as Ben Stokes steers England to World Cup glory

Nature versus nurture. A cliché, yes, but a very apt one to summarise how the final of the 2022 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup played out at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Sunday. In the green corner, the mercurial and so often unpredictable Pakistan team who looked down for the count after losing to India and Zimbabwe but found a way to win four in a row to storm into the final while igniting dreams of 1992 all over again. The nature reference is, of course, to their bowling coach Saqlain Mushtaq’s ‘kudrat ka nazaara’ (forces of nature) comment when asked to sum up how Pakistan had reached the knockouts.

But, in the end, it was nurture that triumphed over nature, and not just because the rain stayed away from the MCG on Sunday. There is a calculated method to England’s rise as a white-ball force since their limp exit from the 2015 ODI World Cup on these very shores of Australia, and it is indeed fitting that they became the first team to hold the ODI and T20 World Cup titles at the same time. Nearly eight years after sinking to defeat to Bangladesh that was the catalyst for their white-ball renaissance, England defeated Pakistan by five wickets to underscore why they were the strongest team in the World Cup and pre-tournament favourites.

Because England cricket’s white-ball DNA since the 2015 World Cup has been about data, statistic, analytics and processes. Their success has been about a clear process. It has been nurtured by the system, the coaches, the analysts, the players and Eoin Morgan, the former skipper who experienced the pain of 2015 and left his mark on the fabric of English cricket in the subsequent four years which culminated with the ODI title at Lord’s.

It was also fitting that the man to hit the winning runs was Ben Stokes, who in the span of three years has experienced the high of the ODI World Cup final at Lord’s, the best Ashes chase since Ian Botham’s Headingley heroics of 1981 – and at the same ground, mind you – and now hit an unbeaten match-winning half-century in a World Cup final. For it was the same Stokes, in his role as a death-overs bowler, who sank to his knees in tears at Eden Gardens in 2016 when Carlos Brathwaite struck him for four successive sixes. Stokes edged and poked and swished and heaved as Pakistan’s excellent pace attack made a total of 138 seem like a lot more during Sunday’s second innings, but crucially he stood there until the end like the boxer who lasted 12 rounds and claimed the championship belt.

If there was a calmness around Butter’s captaincy all tournament, then Buttler’s presence at the crease during a tricky chase was also not without design. To score 52* off 49 deliveries on that lively MCG track and against that revved-up Pakistan bowling attack, after the team slipped to 45/3 inside the Powerplay, and to be at the heart of matters three years on from his ODI World Cup final is but one more feather in the cap of the most fascinating allrounder of this era. Sure, luck played its part in Stokes’ sublime success at Lord’s and Headingley during the summer of 2019, but you cannot take away from the man’s big-match temperament.

It may have seemed like destiny was on Pakistan’s side as their mesmerising campaign largely mirrored their 1992 ODI World Cup run – stumbling start, scraping into the final four, knocking aside New Zealand in the semi-finals and then facing England in the final at the MCG – but ultimately it was precise, calculated and methodical cricket from England that triumphed. Buttler’s team reached the final four without every truly having an ‘England level victory’ but then brought that very powerful template into the semi-final with India, a win that was almost entirely chalked out in the dressing room. Buttler bowling Adil Rashid as soon as Suryakumar Yadav came to the crease, then the skipper deciding that India’s new-ball bowlers had to be taken on from the first ball of the chase … these were precise tactics based on years of analysis and actualisation.

But do spare a moment for Pakistan’s very promising young quick, Naseem Shah, who bowled perhaps the unluckiest spell of fast bowling in a World Cup final. How many times did he beat the bat? As well as for Shaheen Afridi, the left-arm quick who played the entire World Cup when not fully fit and just got better and better with each match, but who limped off the MCG pitch in the final after taking a sliding catch at long-off to get rid of the dangerous Harry Brook. And for Shadab Khan, the most important player for Pakistan in T20Is and this World Cup. Pakistan were indeed a force of nature, and needed nature to help them into the final, but at the summit they were no match for England’s clinically nurtured machinery.