England humiliated as supercharged Ravindra and Conway blast back

Count back those boundaries

- Simon Burnton

For the record England hit 27 and New Zealand 38, but there was no need for spurious tiebreakers as, after restricting their opponents to 282, the Black Caps savaged the reigning 50- and 20-over champions during a response in which practically every over was super. The final game of the last World Cup provided England's cricket fans with some of their most treasured memories; the first of this one will have produced some of the most grisly.

New Zealand, meanwhile, will treasure those of Devon Conway, raising his bat to celebrate reaching 150, by battering another boundary in what was to be the penultimate over. They eventually cantered across the finish line with 82 balls to spare. There was no repeat of that famous day at Lord's in 2019 when the action moved to Ahmedabad: instead of shredded nerves there were shredded records, and instead of an England win by the narrowest of margins there was emphatic, unarguable, almost barbaric defeat.

Though many of the players who contested that thrilling final were present again here, it was New Zealand's newbies who took control. Conway and Rachin Ravindra, whose ODI debuts came in 2021 and this March respectively, did not so much chase their target of 283, they hunted it down. For the short period in which the outcome of this match was in doubt there was no separating them.