England hero Ben Stokes asked the umpires to take away the four overthrows that proved so decisive but controversial to their Cricket World Cup win over New Zealand.

The visitors had scored 241-8 and England needed nine runs off the last three balls of their innings at Lord’s in Sunday’s final.

On the third from last ball, Stokes drove Trent Boult to the deep and was running back for a second when a throw from Black Caps fielder Martin Guptill deflected off Stokes' bat and ran to the boundary.

England were awarded six runs, two for the runs completed and four for the overthrow.

That decision was technically wrong as Guptill threw before the English batsmen had crossed for the second, meaning the host's should have only been awarded five runs.

The 28-year-old immediately apologised and James Anderson, Stokes’ Test teammate for the looming Ashes series, revealed that the English all-rounder, who was hugely apologetic the moment the incident happened, had appealed to the umpires to overturn their decision.

Speaking on the BBC's Tailenders podcast, Anderson said: "The etiquette in cricket is if the ball is thrown at the stumps and it hits you and goes into a gap in the field you don’t run.

"But if it goes to the boundary, in the rules it’s four and you can’t do anything about it.

"I think, talking to Michael Vaughan who saw him after the game, Ben Stokes actually went to the umpires and said, 'Can you take that four runs off. We don’t want it.' But it’s in the rules and that’s the way it is.

"It’s been talked about for a while among the players, potentially that being a dead ball if it does hit the batsman and veer off somewhere."

Match umpire Kumar Dharmasena signalled for six runs where two were accounted for the runs completed and four runs from overthrows.

The match ended in a tie and went to a super over, during which both teams scored 15 runs. The hosts eventually winning on a count of how many boundaries were hit.