Goodness, what another exciting Summer of sport we’ve had. With so many competitions and championships having been postponed due to the pandemic, we were in danger of spending the whole year on the sofa 🤣🤣🤣

 

My hubby enjoys watching any sport either men’s or women. I’m a little more selective, but if an English or British squad are involved in the later stages of the tournament I’m happy to join him.

Throughout the year, we’ve watched a bit of the Winter Olympics, the Women’s Euros, ( our triumphant women bringing football home) the Commonwealth Games, Wimbledon, and the Summer Olympics. That’s not to mention The Hundred (cricket tournament) where we did spend whole afternoons watching our team play 🤦‍♀️.

More recently the English squads have been doing well. The Womens Rugby squad were runners up, by a whisker, to the mighty New Zealand team. They were so so close, losing by a mere 3 points in the final minutes of the match.

I do love to watch a bit of tennis and with the English Women’s squad reaching the semi finals of the Billie Jean King Cup, the afternoon was theirs. Fighting back against Australia to make the last doubles match the deciding game, it was an exiting match. The first set was narrowly won by the Aussies on a tie break. The second set was won by our girls, also on a tie break, meaning the result came down to one final tie break, the first to 10. The Aussies reached 6-3, but our girls fought back once again to level the scores. Sadly though, for us, the Aussies won the next four points, moving them into the finals. But a great day for English Women’s tennis 🎾.

Probably our favourite sport to enjoy together is limited over cricket. With the 20 over World Cup being held in Australia, we found ourselves needing to travel to the sofa for 7 am to watch the England Matches 🛋.

 

As with any English team, it was a topsy turvey time. The weather on occasions was not on our side, and the team do like to keep us on the edge of our seats until the last over of almost every game.

However, over several matches, we prevailed and ended the group stages in 2nd place behind New Zealand 🇳🇿, which meant we would meet India, winners of the other group, in the semi finals.

What a match 😲. Our bowlers were on brilliant form and India’s batsmen were, one by one, walking back to the dressing room, the runs just not flowing. Having dragged their score to 168 at the end of their 20 overs, we were confident the match could be won.

But as I said you never can be certain with an England team, they can come tumbling down when you least expect it. However it was a magnificent innings. The two opening batsman decided it was their day to shine and knocked off the runs at an amazing rate. As each boundary clicked up in the scoreboard, a place in the final drew ever nearer. With four overs to spare the two of them got us over line and the stadium and our sofa erupted with excitement.

The final, a match against Pakistan awaited. 7 am on a Sunday morning is not usually a thing in our house, but we were determined to be there albeit bleary eyed and in our pj’s.

England won the toss & put their opponents in to bat. We seem to have a better record when we’re chasing runs so 🤞🤞. It was a slow game with the score gradually heading towards 100, however England were  snatching wickets on a regular basis. Soon Pakistan were down to their bowlers trying to score the final runs. Closing the innings on 137/8, and England on recent good form, it seemed like the match was in the bag.

But oh, like so many times before the England team made hard work of it, losing our 1st wicket for a mere 7 runs 😬. With the next two falling at 32 & 45 runs, it was looking like it might be a fight to the end.  There weren’t many boundaries, but just enough together with single runs, to keep our run rate up. The wickets kept falling, but even our bowlers can hit a few runs so we kept the faith, though we were on the edge of our seats for most of the innings.

As the remaining overs dropped to single figures, there were a few expletives aimed at the screen. A few more boundaries and we were closing in 🤞🤞. With 12 balls left in the match England needed just 7 runs to win. The first ball went for 1 run, the second saw a wicket fall 😬, the third to the new batsman just another 1, the fourth hit through the fielders and rolled across the boundary for 4 more, we were level pegging. 8  balls to score the winning run, the fifth ball of the over was missed completely, forcing big groans from the sofa 🤣, the final ball of the over and it was whipped across the field as the batters ran the last run needed.

The remainder of the team were running on to the pitch even before the batters had completed their run, but hey they had just won the T20 World Cup 🏆. There were fabulous scenes with fireworks exploding into the Australian night sky and England fans singing in the stadium.

Englands bowler Sam Curran, was announced the man of the match, having taken 3 wickets for a mere 12 runs and also player of the tournament for his overall batting and fielding skills. What an achievement at 24 years of age. 👏👏👏

The proud England Team having won the ODI (one day international 50 overs) World Cup in 2019 are now double World Cup holders. What an exciting time to be an English cricket fan.

We have booked tickets to an ODI, against New Zealand next year and are now even more excited to know that we will be in the crowd watching these fantastic players.