England came into this Ashes Summer (the world’s cricket tournament) on a massive high after becoming world champions for the first time. They quickly had a fall from grace, falling to Tim Paine’s Australia and ultimately losing the Ashes at home for the first time since 2001. Despite this, England’s performance over the Summer revitalized the sport in the country.

The summer started with a home World Cup, with the added pressure of coming into the tournament as favorites. The added pressure is kicked in even more as the last two hosts of the tournament went on to win the championship (India and Australia, respectively).

The tournament started swimmingly for England. Whilst painting my kitchen back home I listened to England beat South Africa, this set a trend for how my summer went. England kept playing a great brand of cricket despite losing to Pakistan, which was pushed to the side and excused as a bad day at the office. However, back to back losses to Sri Lanka and Australia left England in a dangerous position, one loss away from not making it to the semi-finals.

Back to back important wins against India and New Zealand meant that England clinched an appearance in the semi-finals, and a resulting win against Australia set up a final against the Black Caps, New Zealand.

After a roller coaster of a final and the heroics of Ben Stokes, England won the world cup in the super over on boundaries scored. This was the jewel in the crown for an England team that helped start a cricket revolution in England with their magical play through the tournament.

The win made England the only nation to win the World Cup in football, rugby and cricket.

In the end, the home Ashes tournament was disappointingly drawn and means Australia retains the Ashes. This summer was a huge success for English cricket moving forward.

During the Ashes, there were some great highlights to be shown for England. Ben Stokes and Jack Leach’s heroic innings to win the 3rd Ashes test and Jofra Archer consistently bowling in and around 90 mph helped push England all the way.

As well as this, the performances by Ben Stokes in both the Ashes and World Cup have helped to grow the popularity of the sport. They have helped to show people that cricket isn’t a boring sport played by old men. It is played by finely tuned athletes and even Test cricket that is played over five days can be the most exciting sporting spectacle you will ever witness.

All in all, England lost the Ashes without losing the series and won the World Cup, so were rewarded with all their hard work in the years’ previous. Therefore, I believe the summer of cricket has been a huge success. It is so easy to focus on the negatives. Yes, they should have batted better during the Ashes, but thanks to players like Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer, the sport in England is back on people’s radar.

If you ask someone where they were during the Super Over on July 14th, 9/10 people in England will be able to pinpoint where they watched or listened to those magical 12 balls of cricket. Not many things in life are able to do that, and such is the magical thing about sports.