Stokes: It was like the whole world had come down on me

West Indies needed 19 runs from the final six balls and Carlos Brathwaite stepped up to the plate, smashing maximums from each of the first four deliveries to crush England's World Cup hopes and etch his name into cricket's history books.

Ben Stokes during the final over in the World T20 final.

For any bowler, getting hit for four sixes is the stuff of nightmares, but in the final over of the World Twenty20 final, it was "complete devastation" for England's Ben Stokes.

West Indies needed 19 runs from the final six balls and Carlos Brathwaite stepped up to the plate, smashing maximums from each of the first four deliveries to crush England's World Cup hopes and etch his name into cricket's history books.

Stokes will be hoping no one remembers the man who was bowling to him and has opened up on the feeling in the immediate aftermath.

"I thought, 'I've just lost the World Cup'. I couldn't believe it," he told the Daily Telegraph. "I didn't know what to do. It took me so long to get back on my feet. I didn't want to get back up. It was like the whole world had come down on me."

"There weren't any good things going through my mind. It was just complete devastation. For about 40 minutes at the end of the game I knew I just had to deal with it. I had to come back out on the field, collect my medal and listen to all the speeches."

"I knew the cameras would be all over me to see how I was. Obviously I was gutted but I did not want to show that. I wanted to keep my head up."

The 24-year-old said it was hardly getting easier with time, despite plenty of support from his peers, including Australia great Shane Warne. "It is probably only now really that all the emotions have started to come out about it. I couldn't reflect on it at the time. There was just shock," he said.

"But I said to Morgy [Eoin Morgan] afterwards that I was more nervous bowling the last over of the semi-final than I was the final. The team and management are very quick to be very supportive of you in those situations. But they couldn't really say anything to make me feel much better."

"Disappointment is the biggest emotion now. I remember getting the medal and thinking it's just a runners-up medal. You don't want it. You want the winner's medal but then later we had two hours in the changing room and all the lads had medals around their neck and we were saying nobody can take this moment away from us."

"We played for our country in a World Cup final. Let's be proud of that."