Couldn’t care less that there is feeding in our scrum. I’m more bothered about the “con” penalty where the team pretends the ball has come out and catches the other side offside. I would make it a differential penalty.

I once saw Allan Langer throw a dummy by pretending to feed the scrum, then scuttle round the back of the scrum and try to make a break from the back. The ref (I think it was Ganson) caught him though!

Ben Stokes and the England team (mostly Ben Stokes) have stolen the summer really with the world cup and 'that' ashes battling display.

This lack of interest in the England Rugby Union team is just an added bonus.

if this England RU team doesn't win the world cup, they will be failures based on the strength of their opposition.... The battle for 2nd ranked national sport hots up.

Cricket 1-0 Rugby Union

I have never had the excitement of the 2019 Cricket World Cup final in any other sport. Electrifying.

it was literally unbelievable.... Probably the greatest end to a sporting event... Certainly the best one ive ever seen.

I actually thought the Headingley Ashes test a few weeks later was a more exciting finish.

I think it was because after that ball hit Stokes' bat and went for overthrows part of me felt that NZ had been done over by raw luck. If that had been Australia or India I wouldn't have cared, but with NZ being likeable underdogs I felt bad for them. From that point on, I wouldn't have really minded if NZ won the final.

In the Headingley test, England were the underdogs and at 10 wickets down were rank outsiders, and the opposition was Australia so I was far more invested.

Stokes was the common denominator in both...he must be THE biggest 'big game' performer I've ever seen from England in any sport, with Gary Lineker/Shearer probably the next best.

Really mate? no doubt the lads had a great year and was lucky to be part of a very good one day team, but until this year on the whole his career has been fairly inconsistent imo, with bat and ball, hence his averages. Don't you remember the T20 final 2016 where we had a big lead in the last over to win the Trophy and Stokes got took for 4 sixes and WI won.

No doubt it was an excellent innings at Headingley but for me it isn't the best I've seen even in Leeds, that would be Pietersen's against SA in 2012 where he dominated Steyn, Philander & Morkel like they were U13 side and they were the best bowling attack atm, scored 149 off about 200 balls. I can't take away what Stokes done this summer, he's really come of age & he's finally becoming the batman I thought he would be in Test cricket, but for me Pietersen is still by some distance the best big game player England have had, as well as playing some of their best innings full stop, when it was the Ashes or India or SA, or when we won the World T20, Pietersen always seemed to put on a show.

I take it you never saw Ian Botham? His 149 at Headingly in 1981 was off 148 balls against Australia whos attack included the likes of Dennis Lillee and Geoff Lawson! A match winning innings without a doubt along with the 7 or 8 wickets he also took in the game! Pieterson was a great batsman but in terms of match winners can't be mentioned in the same breath as Botham! And Botham was English of course!

The Ashes match at Headingly was miraculous, but for me the World Cup Final was the bigger stage and so the stakes were highest and hence the spectacle.

I think the one thing that cricket will achieve this year is a quite unique double (though I'm not a big enough anorak to check if this will be the first time), where sportsmen from the same sport will win the Sports Personality of the Year (Stokes) and the Overseas Sportsman award (Steve Smith).

As for the better occasion, I think the Headingley test just outdoes the World Cup Final for the sheer 'miracle' of it - Saying that, both occasions showed how much sheer good fortune can pay in sport. In both matches, England had enormous amounts of luck and contributed massively to the drama of the events.

2005 Flintoff and Warne
1997 Rusedski and Hingis
I'll get my anorak

Botham had a lot of games where he was a match winner, especially with the ball too in the early part of his career. Sadly by the time I started watching cricket he was an ageing force with a back injury, but whenever it rained in a Test match the BBC used to show that Headingley 1981 with Richie Benaud commentating "won't even bother looking for that, let alone chasing it...." etc.

I have to agree on Pietersen. I liked him very much and thought he got a rough deal from England but I wouldn't call him a reliable big game player. He was a player who sometimes scored big but often got out to a loose shot when he was on 70 or so. You couldn't rely on him. I'd put him in the same category as Joe Root and David Gower.

For me the best big game batsman England had was Graham Gooch during the period he was captain in the early 1990s. That was an iconic era of great fast bowlers and there were a lot of legendary batsmen around as well but Gooch was world no1 for a lot of that period. I remember him getting a match winning century on a green wicket in Headingley against peak West Indies quicks in a game where everyone else from both teams struggled. He made big runs under pressure against Wasim and Waqar and Hughes/Warne at their peaks as well. I think he is massively underrated in cricketing history.

Another good shout would be Graham Thorpe as well although he often performed well under pressure in losing causes, he wasn't really a match winner.

Spot on...still for me our best ever player/all rounder...he wouldn't take no crap off the big mouthed Aussie's...

Wasn't that the match when Lillee and Rod Marsh put on bets for England to win and won over 7,000 quid as a result?