I was born in England just outside the Oval, but I moved to Barbados at the age of two. I do not remember much of England, but my older brother remembers a lot about it.
And it was good that yesterday (Saturday) it all happened at the Oval once again. It was the sort of homecoming that the English will, hopefully, not forget any time soon.
It was very difficult, and the pace with which Steve Harmison was bowling [one of his deliveries was timed at 95.9 mph] in the deteriorating light made it all the more difficult.
But Ian [Bradshaw] and I had decided that if we were going to win this, it had to be today; because if we came back tomorrow then we would have to get set all over again. It was do or die.
When [Shivnaraine] Chanderpaul was dismissed at 147 for 8, I said to myself 'This one is going to be tough.' I never said to myself that we would get easy runs. England had quality bowlers to come back and they had everything in their favour. And I mean everything.
But Ian is the kind of guy who always believes that he can win. And when he came into bat, he asked me, 'What is the plan?'
I said, 'Once we bat 16 overs, we are going to win the game.'
He said, 'Okay, that's what we are going to do.'
I said, 'We just have to see off Harmison and Flintoff, whenever they come back, and we will win the game.'
The umpires offered us light but we refused to go in, simply because we play a lot of club cricket back home and we are used to batting in such conditions. I mean in the West Indies it gets pretty dark around 5:30-6:00 in the evening.
Ian struck the winning runs, the last four runs. Undoubtedly, we had won; I mean we could not have batted the last over and not got those runs. But with every passing ball the pressure increased.
And the last ball of the second last over, I was saying, 'Please bowl a ball outside the off-stump to Ian and he will hit it for four.'
Same thing happened. We wanted to win the game in the second last over because we did not want the match to go into the last over.
And when Ian hit the winning runs, there was so much noise. I just felt bodies falling on top of me. But it was all good. I really did enjoy it.
This is the most memorable moment of my career so far, because it is a global tournament and it was in England with a lot of media coverage as well. It was tremendous.
Wicketkeeper Courtney Browne, the architect of the West Indies' amazing victory over England in the final of the ICC Champions Trophy, spoke to Senior Correspondent Ashish Magotra after the Champions Trophy final.
