When the Last Ball Breaks a Nation

South Africa was staring at the barrel of a gun in this T20 World Cup match when Fazalhaq Farooqi turned and began his walk back to the top of his mark. The equation was absurd even by T20 standards: seven needed off one ball. The Afghan fielders weren’t calculating angles or field placements anymore. Their only real fear was simpler - don’t overstep. Don’t bowl a no-ball. Make them earn the miracle.

The delivery was legal. Worse than illegal, it was hittable.

A full toss.

Tristan Stubbs swung. The sound off the bat was final. The ball disappeared. Afghan hope disappeared with it. The six didn’t just tie the match and force a Super Over - it rewrote the emotional balance of a game Afghanistan had controlled for 239 balls and lost on the 240th.

In that instant, Afghan players sank. Shoulders dropped. Faces emptied. It was not anger. It was recognition of a sporting truth too cruel to argue with.

Indian fans watching knew that feeling intimately.

Because they had lived it before.

In the final of the Austral-Asia Cup at Sharjah in 1986, Pakistan needed four off the final ball. Chetan Sharma was not aware that he was bowling to the vilest cricketer of his time - Javed Miandad and like Stubbs, he launched it into the Sharjah night and an entire nation felt victory turn to defeat mid-air.

The Afghan players, after Stubbs’ six, wore the same expression Indian players wore that night: the look of a team briefly disconnected from reality. A match already won in the mind had been stolen by physics.

A line echoed for years in Indian cricket circles - often attributed to either Sunil Gavaskar or Ravi Shastri: “That was the most expensive ball in cricket history.”

Sharjah in the 1980s was cricket’s early commercial frontier. Prize money, bonuses and prestige - all hung on that delivery. India didn’t just lose a match; they lost money and psychological advantage in the sport’s fiercest rivalry. Six runs translated into thousands of dollars and decades of emotional leverage.

Of course, Chetan still carries that stigma. He has been quoted as saying that ‘it has been more than four decades, but people keep reminding me of it’. But the psychological blow it dealt to the Indian team was much more severe. Pakistan won at least 5-7 ODI matches against India at Sharjah in the era. Before that defeat, India had always had the upper hand over Pakistan in Sharjah.

What Javed Miandad did to Chetan Sharma, Carlos Brathwaite did worse than that to Ben Stokes in the last over of the 2016 ICC World Twenty20 Final. Stokes, who thrived in the role as one of England’s death bowlers throughout the tournament, conceded 24 from his first four balls with the West Indies needing 19 to win.

After being hit for four consecutive sixes, Stokes spoke with vulnerability, rare in elite sport. There was no attempt to hide behind clichés or dressing-room language. He described the moment exactly as it felt: “I thought, ‘I’ve just lost the World Cup’. I couldn’t believe it. It felt like the whole world had come down on me.”

He admitted the shock was so heavy he didn’t even want to get back up after the over ended. The emotional impact wasn’t just disappointment - it was paralysis. For days afterwards, he avoided watching a replay. He wasn’t ready to relive a moment that had already replayed endlessly in his head.

Years later, Stokes would say that night never really left him - but instead of breaking him, it hardened him. The same over that froze a World Cup became fuel for one of cricket’s great comebacks, proof that sport’s cruellest moments often shape its strongest competitors.