Dan Jones: Perfection can be found in Ben Stokes’ heroic World T20 final failure

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Dan Jones5 April 2016

Of all the people to have climbed Mount Everest, there are two who matter most. One is Sir Edmund Hillary, the man who got to the top first. The second is George Mallory, who didn’t get there at all but rather died while on his way in 1924, battling heroically against hostile elements and a task that overwhelmed him.

I do not wish to compare Carlos Brathwaite, the West Indian cricketer, to Mount Everest, except to note that both of them are very tall. Nor do I wish to say that there is a very deep likeness between the mortal business of going up Everest and the essentially amusing exhibition game of bat and ball that is Twenty20 cricket.

All the same, as Brathwaite pounded England’s cricketers into submission with those four great sixes in the World Twenty20 Final on Sunday night, it was of Hillary and Mallory that I began to think.

Many people believe that there is only one thing worth doing in sport: winning. In fact, there are two: winning and losing heroically. Neither is easy to achieve, and if you were offered a choice between them almost everyone would be the man hoisting the trophy rather than the one who let it slip from their fingers with seconds left on the clock.

But still: the bitterness of defeat sustained a heartbeat from apparent triumph is one of the great feelings in sport. I do not pretend it is a nice feeling but it has a profundity to it, a depth, which no other experience can really match.

I was listening to the West Indies innings of the final in my car during a long drive north up the Al(M) on Sunday afternoon, mentally scratching off the balls remaining, chewing the skin by the side of my fingernails as Marlon Samuels kept the Windies just in touch with the required score.

As the death overs approached it seemed plain how the match would end: England would strangle the West Indies just as they had done to the previous world champions Sri Lanka in the last match of the pool stages.

Chris Jordan and Ben Stokes would send down the final 12 balls, and the batsmen at the crease — whoever they were — would find themselves immobile, their bats as heavy and useless as if they had been entangled by knotweed.

England would grind, almost audibly, to victory. They would defend a small target through sheer bloody willpower. A team who arrived in India as one-day cricket’s biggest losers would be the world champi…

Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Brathwaite howitzered the dream. England did almost everything perfectly for 19 overs.

But then, instead of glorious strangulation, there was only utter ruin. It went as badly as it could have done. The losers lost, and Stokes was down on his haunches, his face reddened by tears.

Later on, I watched those final overs on a screen. The television pictures, produced for the entertainment of all nations and not the consolation of one, rightly focused on the West Indies’ joy at winning their second T20 World Cup. They have been through plenty and their own story — victory to spite those above them — has plenty to recommend it.

Congratulations to them. But congratulations also to England, and particularly to Stokes: for in valiant failure they elevated the match, and the game, and themselves.

I am sure that Stokes does not need any more arms around his shoulders. In 2014 a locker-room door in the West Indies broke his wrist. In 2016 a locker room user from the West Indies broke his heart. These opponents have not treated him well.

But let us say this: there are none in the current England team with more heart, character or charisma than Stokes.

He was heroic in merely stepping up to bowl the first ball of that last over, and more so with each successive one he delivered. Even though, ultimately, he bowled all four with little distinction and no success, he may be consoled by the fact that few other men could have failed quite so majestically as he.

It is as Mallory wrote of Everest: “If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go.”

Nerves will be jangling over new drugs scandal

Arsenal, Chelsea and Leicester all deny links with Dr Mark Bonar, the doctor who is accused of claiming to have supplied performance-enhancing drugs to 150 athletes, including some Premier League footballers. But in private they, and every other club in the league, must surely be nervous about the possibility that some players are seeking the help of unscrupulous private physicians. How serious is the problem of drugs in football? The disturbing truth is we don’t know.

Joshua win could lead to wee little problem

I’m looking forward to Anthony Joshua fighting Charles Martin for the IBF world heavyweight title this weekend. For one, Joshua is a prospect, who needs to start fighting non-bums. Better still, a win will nudge him nearer a bout with Tyson Fury. That’s good for many reasons but chiefly because Fury says the IBF belt is worthless and that he would like to “throw it on the floor and p*** on it”. I doubt that is an empty threat and, frankly, I want to see it done.

Tiger’s playing… now that’s an april fool

“I’ve decided it’s prudent to miss this year’s Masters,” wrote Tiger Woods. That was last Friday, so I spent a while thinking it could be an April Fool, before concluding that a far better wind-up would be a statement saying Tiger’s in good health, smiling, has been hitting a few balls and is looking forward to a season not wrecked by spiritual misery and physical pain. Tiger won’t play the Masters on Thursday, obviously. And surely that’s no longer the least bit shocking.

It’s depressing to see Fifa in the data dump

On one level the Panama Papers merely suggest what we already knew: that the world’s richest and most powerful are adept at sheltering their wealth, and that where there is muck, there are big fat bluebottles. But it is still depressing to see that a member of Fifa’s ethics committee has been dragged into the confusion erupting from the Mossack Fonseca data dump. The post-Blatter Fifa say they are reforming. It feels as though this is going to be a very long process.

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