Well, if that doesn’t get them in, nothing will. You hope, against hope, for a classic. You dream of a tight finish, even a last-over nipper, because you know people are peering in. You look at this game of yours, at this peculiar antsy diversion that you love so much, with all its history and millennial angst, and you wonder. You wonder what it might dare to deliver when it matters. When they’re watching, on this one-off day.

And then that happens. On that stage. This one’s for everybody who’s ever been slightly moved by the motion of a moving ball. A moment in time to reverberate through the unaware and the yet-to-know; to infiltrate the unacquainted and the blissfully baffled.

The greatest game of cricket ever played.

RESULT: England win the 2019 Cricket World Cup after an astonishing game at Lord’s. Stokes (84*) took the final to a Super Over and then Archer held his nerve at the death as a run-out from Jason Roy sealed the win.

Scoreboard ? #NZvENG #CWC19Final https://t.co/ea3YBhLlOX pic.twitter.com/OCqcRrUFyl

— Wisden (@WisdenCricket) July 14, 2019

This is New Zealand’s tale tonight: Nobody falls in love with cricket. They fall down with it. It’s the most beautiful, doomed affair you’ll ever have. It will let you down and bleed you dry. It will promise the world and whip it from you. And you’ll never, ever leave it be. Other sports can claim their fair share of obsessives but with cricket, it’s more like a compulsion. You know it will hurt you, and make you feel bad, but you can’t resist it. And nor would you want to. Not in the end. This is part of cricket’s truth.

England’s tale is all the rarer, and the more exquisite. They were awful, and then they were trailblazers, and now they’ve won four clutch games in a row to win the men’s World Cup for the first time since someone thought it was a good idea to have one.

As individuals, their lives have turned on a dime. Or on a deflection down to third man, the most infamous six in cricketing history. Collectively, they have done something potentially seismic and lasting. They knew, just as we did, that cricket isn’t like other sports. Now in the full glare of a captive audience, they’ve proved it.

578 runs at 82.57
Two hundreds
Two fifties
Highest score of 148
Captains his side to a World Cup Final

Kane Williamson is the 2019 World Cup Player of the Tournament. #NZvENG #CWC19Final pic.twitter.com/dkT6Bslax2

— Wisden (@WisdenCricket) July 14, 2019

Who can’t be moved by that bowling attack? The way it keeps coming at you, coming at your head until they’ve got inside it. Who can’t be moved by Jofra Archer? The kind of story upon which to hang whole, vast overblown marketing campaigns. So he was born in Barbados? Good. Get him in. His is a story worth telling.

Adil Rashid? There is a story worth telling. Mark Wood, Liam Plunkett, our friends in the north? Sing them loud. Eoin Morgan, packing for London with a bat slung over his shoulder? These are stories about our stroppy little island that are actually worth telling. And how, more than ever, do we need to hear them now.

He has been indebted to English cricket, and at times the weight of self-inflicted expectation has seemed to sit a little heavily. Today was the day it all fell away for good. The story is complete. Something transformative; something vast and unchanging, has taken place. The future has opened itself up for the greatest of all games. So here’s to tomorrow, and the next miracle. You can bet they’ll be watching.

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