Outside, it is cinereous and damp; February creeps in without an ode to anything, least of all joy. But somewhere, surely, the Cricket World Cup final is being replayed. On Tuesday England men’s cricket team play their first ODI since that magical Sunday last July when the bubbles flowed and the sun cranked up and the burnt-orange bricks of the Lord’s pavilion shouted “England” – though in a carefully non-xenophobic way.
When a tied champagne super over gave England victory by dint of more boundaries, when administrators and broadcasters saw sense by showing the game on terrestrial television and school playgrounds the next day were full of did-you-sees and England became the first country to win the football, cricket and rugby world cups, with a team of superstars with multi-national heritage in baby blue pyjamas.
When Jofra Archer bowled a fearless yorker with his last ball, when poor Martin Guptill’s legs turned to cottage cheese, his lungs bursting for an impossible second. When tiny Ashington in Durham added a third World Cup winner to its list of greats – Mark Wood joining Jack and Bobby Charlton. That lazy hot Sunday, nearly seven months and half a lifetime ago.
Since then, mixed fortunes for the gilded 15. Liam Plunkett has been forcibly retired from the one-day side, Jason Roy tried and failed as a Test batsman, Adil Rashid suffered injury, Moeen Ali asked for a rest from the long game, Jonny Bairstow was dropped, recalled and dropped again, Jos Buttler’s Test batting has been lost in a sea of confusion, Ben Stokes hijacked an Ashes Test while ducking in and out of a controversy or two, and Archer become the most talked about English pace bowler since Fred Trueman, before succumbing to a winter-ending elbow injury.
A seemingly random handful of the squad were also thrown honours – a CBE for the captain Eoin Morgan, an OBE for Stokes and the coach Trevor Bayliss, MBEs for Buttler and Joe Root. Nowt for the bowlers but grist to their mill. Presumably the raised eyebrows over the post-2005 Ashes honours vomit, which included Paul Collingwood, who played only one Test, made the list-makers more hesitant this time.
History would suggest, anyway, that time is not always kind to World Cup winners. The England men’s football and rugby union teams have had mixed fortunes after their World Cup victories in 1966 and 2003, the only thing in common being that they failed to win another trophy.
On his way back from Wembley in 1966 to his heavily pregnant wife, Jack Charlton celebrated with a plate of egg and chips at a transport cafe. For others, it got a little more glitzy – Tina Moore, the England captain Bobby Moore’s wife, described how they were invited to a party by Lionel Bart, alongside Tom Jones and Joan Collins. Moore then became a model for a gentlemen’s outfitters and was named one of the 10 best-dressed men of 1971. The gongs came in dribs and drabs – a knighthood for Alf Ramsey, OBEs for the Charlton brothers when they retired, a knighthood for Geoff Hurst a mere 32 years after scoring the winning hat-trick and an afterthought of MBEs for the forgotten rest in the 2000 New Year honours list. Football-drilled dementia has also been an unwelcome spectre, striking down Martin Peters, Nobby Stiles, Ray Wilson and Jack Charlton.
Ramsey’s team next got together for a game against Northern Ireland in the 1966-67 British Home Championship, a journey to Windsor Park, Belfast. The buildup to the game was enlivened with the news that the taxman wanted a share of the £1,000 win bonus the England squad had received (something that Moore and Hurst challenged successfully in the courts). In the match itself, George Best twinkled all over but England won 2-0.
However, the following April England lost the British Home Championship final at Wembley to Scotland, who therefore crowned themselves world champions, ending England’s run of 19 unbeaten games under Ramsey. Jack Charlton broke a toe but had to hobble on regardless because no substitutions were allowed, and there was a pitch invasion at the end by giddy Scottish fans, who tore up and pocketed chunks of the turf as souvenirs. After losing in the quarter-finals in 1970 in Mexico, England failed to qualify for the 1974 World Cup.
In 2003 Jonny Wilkinson kicked his drop goal into the drizzling Sydney sky with seconds left on the clock, and England became the first – and to date only – northern-hemisphere winners of the Rugby World Cup. They were rewarded with an open-top bus tour, the freedom of Greater London from Ken Livingstone and at the very least an MBE – Martin Johnson got a CBE and the head coach Clive Woodward was knighted. Post-retirement, most of the team headed into coaching or the media, while Kyran Bracken won Dancing on Ice and Ben Cohen did a turn on Strictly, as did – less controversially – a Question of Sport’s Matt Dawson. Mike Tindall married into the royal family.
But, after a 22-game unbeaten run going into the World Cup, that invincible rugby side had gone. In their very next game, they lost 19-13 to Ireland in the Six Nations, the magic no longer quite there.
If there’s a message for England’s cricket side in all of this, it may be: no fear. Or, perhaps: nothing will ever be quite as good again. After all, I don’t know what those gracious runners-up New Zealand have done to deserve their groundhog days since July, this week losing two further matches to super overs to take the total to four in seven months. Sport, eh: what a malicious bastard.