Stuart Broad: Deadly with the ball, handy with the bat

Stuart Broad © Getty Images

Stuart Broad, born on June 24, 1986, is a fine bowling all-rounder who is one of just seven players to have his name on both the batting and bowling honours boards at Lord’s. Jaideep Vaidya goes through the career of the current England Twenty20 captain.

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With his blond hair, blue eyes, tall and lean frame, and overall angelic boy-next-door looks, Stuart Broad could well have been an actor. However, he chose to follow the profession of his dad, Chris Broad, a former England cricketer, and has become an essential member of the England cricket team merely six years after his Test debut. Unlike his father, who was an opening batsman, Broad is a strike bowler who thrives on swinging conditions and puts his 6’5″ height to optimum use. He is no mug with the bat — his highest Test score of 169 is a good seven runs more than his father’s, which proves his proficiency with the willow.

Broad was born in Nottingham and educated at Oakham school. As a young boy, he played “mini-Ashes Tests” in his garden at home. “Weirdly, I always picked Australian players to impersonate,” Broad told the Guardian in an interview. “I’d be [Matthew] Hayden or [Glenn] McGrath or [Shane] Warne. When you’re young you’re influenced by the best teams. So a lot of my favourite cricketers were Australian.”

Broad’s parents separated when he was just four. He was too young to watch his dad play for England, but “I do recall days going to Trent Bridge and Bristol. I remember watching videos and clips of him playing when we won the Ashes, which made me very proud”. However, contrary to popular belief, it’s not his dad but his mum Carole towards whom Broad is grateful for shaping him up as a cricketer. “…my mum was the one who drove me round the country taking me to all the cricket games I played. She’d be the one sat in the cold and the rain in the deckchair watching and waiting to take me home. I spent a lot of time with her chatting about the sport. I wouldn’t be where I am without her.”

Like his dad, Broad was an opening batsman right through his formative years. However, when he was around 17, there was a sudden burst in his height, after which he decided to concentrate more on his bowling. At 19, Broad made his First-Class debut for Leicestershire in 2005. Just a year later, after playing just six domestic one-dayers, he was playing for England in a One-Day International (ODI) against Pakistan, and got Shoaib Malik’s wicket via a nipping off-cutter. Unfortunately, the match had to be abandoned due to rain soon after. Two days earlier, in his T20I debut, he had taken two wickets even as England lost the match.

After all those initial highs, Broad was soon to see the rough side of the coin during the inaugural T20 World Cup in South Africa, when India’s Yuvraj Singh smacked him for six sixes in an over. To Broad’s credit, he did not let the humiliation hamper his mindset. If anything, it only made him stronger. “It will happen more often,” he said. “Batsmen have such a licence in Twenty20, they don’t have to worry about being dismissed, the boundaries are often shorter, the scores are going up. When it started 150 was a good total; it’s now 200-220. I just accepted it and moved on.” Soon after the tournament, England toured Sri Lanka for a Test series which was to see Broad make his debut in the whites. Broad marked the occasion by going on to become England’s second-highest wicket-taker in the series, which against all odds was won by his team.

Broad played in his first Ashes series at home in 2009. He didn’t have a particularly good series, averaging above 36 with the ball, until the fifth Test at The Oval. With the series tied 1-1, England had posted 332 on the board in the first innings, Broad making 37 coming in at No 8. In reply, Australia were looking good on 73 for no loss. Within the space of 21 deliveries, Broad changed the whole equation. First to go was Shane Watson, who was trapped in front on the back-foot by a delivery that pitched outside off but was going on to hit middle-and-leg on impact. Eleven balls and 10 runs later, Broad got Ponting to chop another off-cutter onto his stumps. Michael Hussey fell in Broad’s next over after failing to react quick enough to fend the latter’s in-swinging delivery that rapped the batsman on the pads in front of middle. Michael Clarke, the highest run-scorer of the series till then, then tried to drive Broad through the covers for four, but it was the latter who got four to his name as Clarke hit the ball straight to cover. Australia had fallen from 73 for no loss to 93 for four, and were eventually bowled out for just 160, with Broad getting another wicket to make it five while Graeme Swann took four. Broad was named Man of the Match as England went on to win the Test and series 2-1.

In the following English summer, Broad decided to showcase his batting talent when Pakistan came touring. In the fourth and final Test at Lord’s, Pakistan, who were trailing 1-2, were threatening to level the series after having England tottering at 102 for seven in the first innings when Broad walked in. Mohammad Aamer had got Kevin Pietersen, Paul Collingwood, Eoin Morgan and Graeme Swann out for ducks and was in the middle of a inexorable and destructive spell. But Trott and Broad stuck together for the next 332 runs, breaking the record for the eighth-wicket partnership in what was one of the greatest comebacks in the history of Test cricket.

Broad scored 169 from 297 deliveries with 18 fours and a six, before being dismissed by Saeed Ajmal. Not only was this the highest Test score by an England No 9 and the second highest by any No 9 in the world, but was also seven runs more than his dad’s highest of 162. It was also a wonderful tribute to Miche Broad, Chris’s second wife and Stuart’s stepmother, whose battle with motor neurone disease had just ended.

Broad senior was a proud man. Talking to the Daily Mail, he said: “It was just wonderful. Stuart played superbly. We’ve all known for a long time that he is a talented player. What a stage to confirm that on.” Chris had high hopes for his son in the future: “It’s always been obvious to me that Stuart had far more all-round ability as a player than me and I believe that, if he stays fit and healthy, he will achieve so much more than I did. We’re the first father-and-son to score [a] hundred for England and we were the first to play in an Ashes-winning side. Maybe this winter we’ll become the first to win the Ashes Down Under.”

Chris’s wish was to come true as his son was part of England’s historic Ashes in the Australian summer of 2010-11. Unfortunately, injury ruled Broad out of the last three Tests and he also broke down during the 2011 World Cup where England failed to make the semi-finals. However, Broad was to be rewarded with captaincy of the T20 side in May that year. In India’s tour of England later that summer, Broad set his home ground Trent Bridge (he went on to play for Nottingham after leaving Leicestershire) alight with a superb spell of five wickets in 16 balls without conceding a run, including a hat-trick, as the visitors collapsed from 267 for four to 288 all-out. Broad took 25 wickets in the four-match series, which England won 4-0, and was his team’s Man of the Series.

Stuart Broad… has taken 195 wickets from 57 Tests, 160 wickets from 102 ODIs and 55 wickets from 46 T20 Internationals © Getty Images

The following summer, Broad took 11 wickets against the West Indies in the Lord’s Test, including a then career-best seven for 72. What made the occasion even more special for Broad was that his grandfather Ken was watching from the stands. “I came off with the ball and saw him clapping away — proud as punch,” Broad told the Guardian. “Thinking of him getting the 6am train to Lord’s made it very special. Later, I looked at the honours boards. I’m there for my century and then they have the three-for, five-for and 10-for boards. The last one said: ‘Ian Botham 1978…SCJ Broad 2012.’ Wooahh! I was minus eight when Botham’s name went up. Those achievements mean so much.” Broad is among an elite list of just seven players who have made it to both honours boards, batting and bowling, at Lord’s. The other six are greats such as Gubby Allen, Ray Illingworth, Vinoo Mankad, Keith Miller, Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff.

Broad’s love affair with the home of cricket was to continue the next summer when New Zealand came touring. Broad took seven for 44 — his career-best so far — this time around even as England whitewashed the Black Caps.

Today, Broad is an integral member of the England cricket team in all three formats. He’s one of the finer bowling all-rounders in the world. In Tests, he has more five-fors to his name than he has four-fors, which shows the domino effect he creates while bowling. At the time of writing, he has has taken 195 wickets from 57 Tests, 160 wickets from 102 ODIs and 55 wickets from 46 T20 Internationals. As for his batting, he’s one of the blessed cricketers who has a century at Lord’s to his name. While he is also capable of consuming 103 minutes and 62 deliveries to get off the mark — a world record — he is a disciplined batsman who knows when and how to play his shots. Some of his delectable flicks down the leg are quite reminiscent of his father.

One can safely say that it worked out in cricket’s best interests that Broad decided against going in showbiz.

(Jaideep Vaidya is a reporter, sub-editor and analyst at CricketCountry. A diehard Manchester United fan and multiple sports buff, you can follow him on Twitter and Facebook)