Telling stories is what makes this job great... and this was the greatest I've been privileged to tell

THE CRICKETER'S MOMENTS OF 2019 - SAM MORSHEAD: The silence lasted only for a second - the eye of the storm before the patter of keystrokes returned - but it was powerful: a reminder of what sport can do, even to those who think they've seen it all

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I first knew I wanted to be a sports writer at 12 years old.

Dad and I would sit in the stands at Swindon Town FC - watching miserable football in miserable weather with miserable fellow supporters, him buying into the general sense of melancholy, me scribbling notes on any blank space in the matchday programme.

Once home, and out of the rain, I’d dash to the family computer - a bulking Amstrad, replete with floppy disk drive and monstrous, cartoonish keyboard - and deposit my thoughtsinto three or four hundred words. Proudly, I’d then show off these masterpieces to my parents, who’d nod along politely. Bless them. Without exception, those ‘reports’ were total guff.

By my mid-teens, I had bought fully into the idea of being a cricket writer. When not selected for the school team, I sat on grass verges and pavilion steps and took on the role of correspondent (for which there had never been demand, nor to my knowledge has there ever been since).

Briefly, I dabbled in crayon-drawn wagon wheels to illustrate my words. Sagely, I soon acknowledged that the further I kept myself from numbers, the better.

Writing, though. That was something else. I took, and still take, immeasurable pleasure from filling a page, telling a story, extracting the emotion of a moment and sharing it with the wider world. Set against a deadline, with the expectation of a waiting audience, there is no drug quite like it. 

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It does not matter if the story is of non-League football, semi-professional ice hockey, elite-level speedway or international rugby, I always told myself. It does not matter if the press box is covered in fox hair (I’m looking at you, Oldham Athletic), or has the best seats in the house, like Wembley. 

No. What matters is the story itself.

And then came July 14. And Lord’s. And the highlight of my professional life. A seat among the very best cricket writers in the world, at the pinnacle of the sport I love, with my country competing for the ultimate prize. 

Much of the match remains a blur - memories now confined to YouTube highlights and largely illegible scrawlings - yet the drama of the endgame still plays in my mind with complete clarity, primarily because at that point my match report was changing direction with every ball bowled.

Jos Buttler chipped to cover point with 46 needed from five and a half overs, and what was a celebration of England victory started to take a more Kiwi tone. 

By the time Trent Boult lost his bearings and stepped on the rope to give Ben Stokes six, I had two introductions racing each other to the finish. With 15 needed off four deliveries, the piece had become a lament of the failure of England’s four-year plan.

And then carnage.

Stokes squeezed a six over midwicket, and I stopped writing. What was the point? By this time four separate match reports stared back at me from the screen.

And so I watched - bug-eyed, weary and ever so slightly giddy - as Martin Guptill hurled the ball in from the cover point boundary, and Stokes turned in his crease like an Olympic swimmer pushing off for home before reaching for the wall. 

And I watched ball strike bat, and outrun Colin de Grandhomme to the fence. 

By now everyone else in the Lord’s media centre had given up writing, too. Hands went to heads and mouths; giants of cricket journalism stopped in their tracks by the greatest game of all. 

It was that moment that will stick with me above all others from this summer; the stunned silence lasted only for a second - the eye of the storm before the patter of keystrokes returned - but it was powerful: a reminder of what sport can do, even to those who think they have seen everything.

What a pleasure it was to be there, on a defining day for cricket and the England team. What a privilege it was to tell that story. What a story it was to tell.

OTHER MOMENTS OF 2019

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