England win something!

Shit! What are you supposed to do? This is unprecedented. Don’t know about you, but we celebrated by having quite a bad hangover and having to have an early night. Yay!

Even more strangely, England were the best team in the tournament. The best team doesn’t necessarily win a Twenty20 tournament and the best team has never before been England. It’s all a little unsettling.

We’ve always been of the opinion that while bowlers win you Test matches, batsmen win you Twenty20 matches, because runs are the unit of measurement in this form of the game. However, England’s bowling won the final for them, just as it won them the semi-final.

Specifically, the bowling plans were spot-on. Bowling short at the top order has been England’s tactic throughout the tournament. It makes it that much harder for the batsman to play the ball in front of square and therefore it’s kept the runs down a lot. As Australia’s top order swished desperately and unimaginitively, they were at greater risk of getting out.

If Australia had had a Kevin Pietersen who could sashay down the pitch and drive 93mph deliveries on the up, that might have helped. But they didn’t. Australia’s number three was Michael Clarke, who was on a one-man mission to pick out the fielders and run-out his batting partners.

Bar a bit of a spazz-out when the finish was in sight, England chased down the target professionally, because they knew they could do it.

They made good plans at the start of the tournament. They stuck to them. They gained confidence from the fact that those plans worked and they basically flattened everybody in the latter stages. It’s easy. Why have they never done this before?

England are World Twenty20 champions. Mental.