Opinion: It's only a game, but wow, what a game it was

England's Jos Buttler runs out New Zealand's Martin Guptill during the Super Over in the Cricket World Cup final match between England and New Zealand at Lord's cricket ground in London, England.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

So wrote Charles Dickens in his famous novel A tale of Two Cities.

The opening lines also reference incredulity, lightness, dark, foolishness, belief, hope, despair.

If it wasn't for the fact Dickens wrote those words in the 1850s, you'd have sworn he was at the World Cup cricket final at Lord's.

England's cruel win over the Black Caps highlighted the game's complex myriad of rules that brings out the best and worst in players, from aspiring kids on the school grounds, to club players, to first class and internationals.

It is a game that sometimes does its best to make people hate it.

There are many rules, written and unwritten.

And some don't make sense - the one that won England the World Cup by placing emphasis on boundaries scored rather than wickets taken will be argued long and hard. And probably despised like an Australian underarm bowler for years to come.

It's also a game that can take an awfully long time - especially for parents who crave freedom at weekends, uninhibited by a game that even for kids aged under 10, can take hours.

It's also a game that moved that national doyen of cricket commentators Kim Hill, during the autopsy of the World Cup defeat, to call it "boredom punctuated with acts of terror".

And it's a game that caused a usually calm Napier mother of two, wife of one (yours truly), to slump to the carpet in our TV room, to a position usually associated with Mecca and prayers. Except she was facing south-east, and emitting a low, constant "nooooooooooooo".

It had been an odd morning.

Her husband had been up since 5am, following the game on a combination of herald.co.nz, a Facebook messenger group of craft beer enthusiasts and Radio Sport.

In the dark, he'd put his T-shirt on inside out. And backwards.

A fellow craft beer lover asked why he wasn't watching it on free-to-air television.

Together, my wife and I made it to the TV room in time to see the last ball.

That last ball.

My wife's despair was understandable, given that in the decade her son has played the second most beautiful game in the world, she has expressed head-shaking disdain for cricket's many rules and procedural quirks.

Not to mention weird traditions that prevent mothers from offering drink-bottles and sunscreen to their sons, mid over.

But she has loved the triumphs, the individual and team successes, the comraderie and the drama - even if sometimes the build-up has been akin to watching paint dry on a wall badly sanded by her husband.

Here's the thing though - no other game on earth builds to a climax like cricket.

No other game offers chess-like strategy and analysis, teamwork, the opportunity for individual mental and physical strength, power, skill, luck.

And to have that on display in a World Cup final reinforces the pure essence of sport and the way it can provide its own form of dramatic theatre, like nothing else.

Yes, it's just a game.

But, oh, what a game it was.