It was way past the strictly enforced yet completely ignored curfew. The playground of joy was overflowing to the brim with palpable excitement. The players involved never seemed to run out of their infectious energy. It was an all-time high of euphoria. It was madness every minute. Light was being lost every minute. Still no one wanted to stop playing. No one wanted to go home. Just one more over, we absent-mindedly promised.
Such was often the case when I played cricket in the evenings with the other kids from my society in Mumbai. Our playground of joy was just a cramped street in front of our building leading up to the main entrance gate. Two-wheelers served as the ever-reliable fielders. A six into someone’s balcony was out. A six smashing into someone’s window was game over.
Never did ‘one more over’ actually mean we would only play one more over. Nor did ‘just five more minutes’ accurately tell our parents when we would be back home. Those five minutes were always the shortest and most eventful five minutes. We played box cricket so we protested if a catch was not taken with only one hand. We made our own rules if we owned the bat. We yelled, we argued, we laughed. Those five minutes never ended.
But a cricket match, ultimately, has to end. With a clear result. The Super Over was introduced to ensure that happened. It has been used in limited-overs cricket to determine a winner in the case of a tie since a West Indies vs. New Zealand T20 back in 2008, when Chris Gayle hammered Daniel Vettori for 25 runs by himself in the first ever Super Over. Replacing the ludicrous “bowl-out” of circa 2007 World T20 era, the Super Over emerged as the official tie-breaker and enhanced T20’s reputation as the frenetic, short-form, and high-octane version of cricket.
To even get to the Super Over, something has to go terribly wrong or amazingly right, depending on who you’re supporting. A stupendous batting performance to turn around the chase in the last two overs. A death bowling tour de force to turn the match on its head. A run out on the last ball where the bat ends up inches away from the crease as the bails come off. The obligatory plot twists always seem to be lifted straight from a fictional screenplay. The anticipation and drama leading up to the Super Over is half the fun of the Super Over. It’s like the cricket gods just don’t want the fun to end.
When Jasprit Bumrah fires in an unplayable yorker or when Kieron Pollard comes up with a crucial throw to the keeper, we all have our hearts in our mouths. But the players must be experiencing the nerves on a different level altogether. They all must feel the mounting pressure and the weight of the moment. Some handle it better than others, some wilt under it, and some flourish instead. Mohammed Shami outclassed even Bumrah as he bowled arguably the most flawless Super Over in memory against the Mumbai Indians last week.
Because the pressure, even if it is only for an over, is monumental. Whatever happened in the forty odd overs prior is irrelevant. Clean slate. Six balls. One last chance to win it for your team. What must it feel like to be part of a Super Over? What if those six balls were to determine more than just one match? What if the whole series is on the line? What if it happens to be the World Cup? In front of your home fans, at the home of cricket, at the most prestigious ground, with the most prestigious trophy in the game at stake? Can one over transform tournaments, careers, and lives?
For the players involved these questions are probably not that important, even distracting perhaps. If they are anything like my society friends and I, they gladly stay on the field if it means getting to play for just another over. Our thrill was coming perilously close to breaking the mean old uncle’s windows with an uncontrolled slog. Or sending a straight drive straight down the nearby gutter and deciding through some arbitrary means whose turn it was to go and retrieve the ball. Despite the obstacles, our gully cricket continued, through countless ‘just one more over’ promises to our parents and internal fights about who was up next to bat.
White ball cricket’s Super Over has provided genuinely thrills and an abundance of epic finishes over the years. It has also made some history along the way and immortalized the grandest of all occasions — a 50-over World Cup final. Whether it remains the best and most fair method of separating two sides after a tie is up for debate. It is neither as common as a football penalty shootout or a basketball five minute overtime; it is much more rare (however IPL 2020 begs to differ).
But essentially it’s just one more over. One more over for the players to show what they are made of. One more over for the fans to collectively gasp their breaths and refrain from biting off all their fingernails. One more over of a pure spectacle. That one more over never ended when I played on the street growing up. That feeling of boundless joy, having a shared experience, and living in the moment, for one over or forever, that’s what it must feel like to be part of a Super Over.