First Cricket World Cup final won by a “super over”

The so-called “super over” – six balls of bat-swishing mayhem to determine the winner of a tied match – was used for the first time in an ICC World Cup final when England took on New Zealand in cricket’s showpiece One-Day International at Lord’s, London, UK, on 14 July 2019. Remarkably, after both teams had posted scores of 241 in the 50-overs-per-side match, they fought out another tie in the “super over”, with New Zealand (15 for 1) replying to England’s 15 without loss. In a frenetic finale, the hosts were declared the winners after scoring more boundaries than New Zealand in the regulation match and the “super over” combined (26 to 17).

The “super over” was introduced to limited-overs cricket in 2008 and the World Cup specifically in 2011 (some 36 years after the first ICC World Cup was staged in 1975), although it wasn’t utilized until the England-New Zealand final in 2019. The “super over” replaced the stump-shattering “bowl-out” to separate teams after a tied match.

The 2019 World Cup final was the first-ever One-Day International to be decided by a “super over”, although it had previously been used in women’s and men’s Twenty20 Internationals as far back as 2010.

England’s “champagne super over” (as it was dubbed by the sports press), bowled by Jofra Archer, secured the hosts’ first-ever World Cup triumph after falling at the final hurdle on three previous occasions (1979, 1987 and 1992).