England quick wanted one last shot at Australia so he created a new delivery and got inside David Warner’s head for all timeStuart Broad came into this Ashes armed with 582 Test wickets, a burning desire to stick it to the Australians one last time, just enough bluster to disguise the fact that these days he bowls an 80mph bouncer, and a bandana. You mustn’t forget the bandana. It was a lockdown thing. Other people came out of those months with a breadmaker and a repertoire of sourdough-loaf recipes, a newfound appreciation for their children’s primary school teachers, or any one of a number of debilitating social complexes, but Broad emerged from them with the inspiration for his latest character,...
Even at 36, the seamer showed in the first Test against New Zealand that he’s still capable of ripping an innings apartThe ancient Greeks believed that the gods Deimos and Phobos stalked the battlefield. These sons of Ares spread panic amongst the ranks. Fear was infectious. All it took was one afflicted soldier to turn and run before entire armies were routed.The stakes are much lower during a batting collapse but the same invisible force can descend on those yet to take guard in the middle. Like a herd of spooked wildebeest a dressing room can become gripped by terror as the wickets column ticks over, especially when an apex predator like Stuart Broad is charging towards the crease with...
The veteran England bowler and India’s tailender will be forever linked after the most expensive over in 145 years of Test cricketIndia are nine down, the last pair are in, and Stuart Broad knows exactly what he wants to do. Bounce them. Jasprit Bumrah is in and Bumrah can’t bat, not really. You can count his career average on your fingers. He’s only made one fifty in 12 years of cricket, and after four years in the Test side he has a top score of 34. That was at Lord’s last summer, in the second Test of this same stretched-out series. England tried to bump him in that innings, too, in revenge for the way he had bowled at Jimmy...
For the new England Test coach Brendon McCullum, the job will be feeling a lot bigger now than it did this time last weekSome time in the middle of the afternoon Brendon McCullum quit his position on the balcony, where he had been sitting all through the morning, and disappeared back into the pavilion. He was gone for an hour or so, long enough that you started to wonder if he had clocked that he still had time to make the quarter-to-nine flight from London Heathrow which, with a couple of changes in Dubai and Melbourne, could have had him back in New Zealand by three o’clock Monday morning. Given the way the game was going at the time, he...
After three days of absurdist back and forth, the first Test ended with England calmly and efficiently knocking off the runsWhen the Jubilee Line tube is within a few stops of St John’s Wood on a Lord’s weekend, there tends to be some indistinguishable moment the personnel completely changes. Should you drift into your phone for a fraction too long you might then look back up and the general public throng will have been replaced by men in tailored suits, one arm holding on to the rails, staring each other square in the eyes, networking intent lurking underneath the gleam. This year New Zealand fans are there too, in 20‑year‑old Black Cap shirts as a sign they come in peace,...