Stuart Broad had pitched up at the MCG this week in something of a funk. The big-game Ashes hunter had left Perth more burned than the supporters who had roasted on the hills at the Waca after a career-worst performance that had turned him into a 6ft 5in lightning rod for much of the ire about England’s failed defence of the urn.
Boxing Day, when 88,172 supporters flooded into this cricketing colosseum but had very much dispersed to around half the amount by the end, was not an opening of the floodgates for the 31-year-old. To expect such feats was to be distinctly unrealistic given a grassless, bat-first pitch on a day of cloudless blue skies and temperatures in the high 20s.
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