We have all heard of Stuart Broad’s batting career – effective tail-ender who received a blow on the head from a quick bowler to struggle with the bat. A perfect interval break in a melodramatic Bollywood flick. The second half of this story perhaps started at Old Trafford on day two of the third Test against West Indies.
Walking in at 280/8, Broad showed aggression and better tact in his batting. He cracked a half-century, the joint-third-fastest by an England batsman in Test cricket and also his first fifty-plus score in three years.
In the video conference at the end of the day’s play, Broad talked of how he took cues from Shane Warne’s batting in the 2005 Ashes series.
“Mooresy [Peter Moore] came to me at the start of June and said ‘look at how Shane Warne played, particularly in the 2005 Ashes [249 runs at an average of 27.66] he scored some really useful runs – quite unorthodox, opening up different parts of the field; I looked at that, did a bit of research as to how he went about it and decided it was a good way for me to go – opening up the off side. It felt pretty comfortable today; having a clear game plan of what to do.”
“One of my last Test innings, at The Wanderers, I played in this style and really enjoyed it – with Mark Wood, we put on 100 or just less than that [Wood and Broad put on 82 for the final wicket].
“I tried to think back to how that went because I didn’t really have any match practice recently to rely on.
“I’ve done a couple of tactical and technical things with Peter Moores back at Notts, which has helped me set up a better game plan and I stuck to that today.
Batting is such a frustrating, weird thing. If you’d have told me this morning I’d get 10, I’d be pretty happy, and then you end up getting 60 and start kicking the ground that you’ve not got 70.”