A theory has been doing the rounds in my household about the Indian pace bowler Varun Aaron. Which is fine. You take what you can get with kids. Using a knife and fork, respectful attention to elders. There’s work to be done here. But theories about the careers of mid-rank Indian quicks are a definitive strong point and this one suggests Aaron, who hasn’t played international cricket since 2015, is an advanced Terminator android sent back in time by some future Indian cricket administration to end the top-level batting career of Stuart Broad.
The bouncer Aaron bowled into Broad’s grille at Old Trafford three and a half years ago remains the only really significant act of Aaron’s brief international career. Even from the sidelines it is a horribly painful memory. Not to mention a kind of end point in Broad’s batting career, leaving him with a degree of residual anxiety that makes every writhing, scarecrow-like attempt at facing Australia’s high-pace attack on the current Ashes tour an act of genuine courage.
The Aaron-as-Terminator theory hangs on the idea Aaron was deployed to prevent Broad scoring a destiny-altering hundred against India in some now-deleted parallel timeline. Under this version of history the ECB will have spent the last few years frantically building its own Terminator, perhaps a surprise third robot Overton brother, to go back in time and take Aaron out on a Lions tour in early 2014, thereby saving Broad’s batting, English cricket and probably the world, too.
As a theory there’s probably not much in it. In fact watching Broad over the last few weeks on those lovely lime-green bleached out satellite pictures it is hard to avoid the impression of a cricketer who is pretty Terminator-like himself, defined by an ability to persevere, to refuse to be derailed. Even when, as now, there is an air of entropy about that game, gangling run to the crease, a sense of receding powers, the sound of a little distant exit music.
As Broad bowled the final over on day two and the sun started to dip over Perth a lone Australian voice could be heard below the Waca press box droning the much-loved standard “Broady is a wanker” – a jazz-funeral farewell to another long Test match day, but with an elegiac quality too, an awareness perhaps of something passing.
This Perth Test is a significant anniversary for Broad. It is now exactly 10 years since he made his debut in Colombo as a flappy-limbed 21-year-old. Broad has bowled more than 30,000 balls for England in that decade, second only to Jimmy Anderson on the all-time list. He’s still running in straight and fizzing it down from that simple high action. He’s still niggly and relentlessly competitive.
But he is yet to make any impact on this series. Outside of Adelaide, where and when the ball began to nip and swerve, his bowling has been meek. On Friday he came back for a second spell on the bouncy Perth pitch and saw his first ball hooked miles back into the crowd by Steve Smith, flipping it over deep fine leg with whip-crack disdain.
Broad cranked up his pace a little. But this is not quite the full Broad, that weather front of relentless, needling accuracy. A few balls later Usman Khawaja rocked back, waited for an age, and skimmed Broad away through point with wrists that seemed to have wrists of their own, not so much murdering a wide short ball as extravagantly garrotting it.
Broad is too well-grooved to ever really let the team down these days. But this is a career pegged out around those rare, giddy spells when the sky turns a shade of marmalade, the cats start to bark, the pavilion bell strikes Broad o’clock and suddenly anything is possible. Which is fine. But it has been a while now.
It is 19 Tests and almost two years since Broad took five wickets in an innings. It will surely come again. Broad is a big-moment player and Perth over the next two days would be extremely timely. But there are other things too. Last English summer at least one Broad watcher noticed his arm was getting lower, sign of a well-weathered fast bowler. Broad has said this was part of a technical shift to try and move the ball away from the right-hander, something he lost for a while, and seems to have only regained fitfully.
Not that it really matters much from here. Broad’s legacy is already set. His stats are phenomenally good for an England bowler, and better than Anderson away from home. This has been a wonderful career, a rare example of wringing every drop from a relatively prosaic range of skills – at least on the Anderson magic-ometer – backed up by a good brain, mighty will and fine physique.
Obstacles have come and gone. Thirty one is hardly old, although a decade of year-round elite cricket is more than most manage. The only real question from here is how much more Broad can gouge out of himself, whether he can rewire his circuit boards, jazz up his battery, apply a little motor oil to those fizzing circuits and come again at a time when England so desperately need a glimpse of that old, easy fury.
Plus, there is also the question of how well the relationship works in reverse, exactly how keenly England are looking after Broad in his dotage. It is no secret the Bayliss-Strauss axis is geared towards white ball cricket. Meanwhile, in the long form, England have congealed, winning five of their past 15 matches, and barely turning up overseas.
Bayliss is a fine white ball coach. But in Test cricket he has so far offered nothing of any substance, not helped by some bizarre selections and his own sacking-offence omission of failing to watch county cricket. Rig up an old pumpkin on a splint with a baseball glove and a floppy hat with a hidden tape recording of a measured, pained voice talking about finding your natural game and you could probably save the Test team its share of that £400,000-a-year salary.
It is only logical to wonder what this set-up has had to offer Broad, who for all his experience and class still needs refinement and improvement to stay at his level. This feels like a low. As England cling on, fingernails scraping the surface of the Australian summer, this would be the perfect moment to rev up through the gears once again.
