Spare a thought for Stokes ...

Agreed for a fact that T20 is a batsman's game, so even for an asking rate of 12 runs or thereabouts in an over, one would bank on the team batting to win.
But 19 runs!!!! The odds would be pretty much stacked up against the best of the best. Only somebody like a Dhoni or a Maxwell may be capable of achieving that target.

Carlos Brathwaite!!! Who? Well, he did sell for Rs. 4.2 cr in the recent IPL auction but then how many really saw him? Nobody had heard of him in this cricket mad country of ours. And the same franchise paid Rs. 16 cr for Yuvraj last year.

Brathwaite's performance is akin to Pollard's 54 off 18 deliveries against New South Wales in the Champions League in 2010. There's been no looking back for him ever since. He's been the mainstay of all teams that he plays for, barring his national team, of course.

Yes, one may argue that all the deliveries were in Brathwaite's hitting zone but then it does take a cool and a calculated head to strike 4 sixes on the trot on such an important day and at such an important juncture.
And he achieved the target with 2 deliveries to spare.

We all know what the situation was. A World Cup final. All eyes of the cricketing world were glued to the match. A batsman, hitherto unknown, facing a bowler touted to be the next Ian Botham for England.

While Brathwaite became the toast of the cricketing world, let's just spare a thought for poor Ben Stokes.
In a T20 match, one ball or one over is enough to decide the match, so there's no way anyone can relax. The captain has to make decisions so fast that the only ones who're faster are aircraft pilots.
Ask Ashwin or Pandya and they'll share the pain of those no-balls that let Simmons lead a charmed life and win the semis for the Windies.

In this day and age, death over bowling is meticulously planned and bowlers spend long hours practicing full length deliveries on and outside the off stump, yorkers, slower ones and what not.

But what happened in that final over proves the fact that even the best laid plans can backfire and the bowler sometimes can just forget the plan in the heat of the moment. A cool and calm head was required and Stokes was anything but that.
Come to think of it, he bowled an outstanding spell against the Kiwis just a couple of day ago. Along with Chris Jordan, he also held the Lankan's back, in a league game.

Ask any bowler and he'll tell you the kind of sleepless nights they spend if they're hit for 3 consecutive sixes. Your's truly has experienced that. That moment just takes the wind out of your sails. Your mind goes blank and you completely lose track of what's going on.
The best you can hope for is for the earth to open up and gobble you up, so you don't have to face your teammates, your coach, your supporters and most importantly you just can't look at yourself in the mirror.

The mayhem that followed in the 20th over will remain with Stokes for quite some time. But then, he's young and has age on his side. He will come back in the next World Cup and prove to the world that he's not that Stokes who got massacred on that fateful day.
Expect him to bounce back and become an even better bowler at the death.