As he readies himself for a return to Brisbane, where he holds a very special place in local spleens, Stuart Broad is happy sitting out the second of England’s three tour matches. While he “bowled like a drain” in Perth it is more important, he says, for batsmen to adapt to the pink ball than bowlers, and he wants to rest now before playing in Townsville next week so he peaks at the right time.
This is Broad’s third tour of Australia. The first ended with injury in Adelaide, with his replacements excelling as England went on to win. In the second England were thrashed but Broad bowled well in the face of a mauling from the public. He has bowled a match-winning spell in each of his three Ashes series at home (all of which England won), but arrives feeling he has plenty to prove. “I feel like I’m ready for one of those spells again,” he says, and he is thinking hard about how he will make it happen.
Broad still expects to take plenty of abuse at the Gabba – he cheerfully notes that he even got it when playing for Hobart in last year’s Big Bash – and would even be a touch disappointed if he does not. He believes England’s whole squad “have to prepare themselves for a bit”.
“It is a great part of the Ashes series, a great part of the rivalry,” he says. “When Australia come to England, the stick Mitchell Johnson was getting at Edgbaston was pretty lively, maybe not as abusive but quite lively … You’re better off getting jeered than nothing. At least if you’re jeered, someone has heard of you or you’ve done something in an Ashes series.”
Both sides see their bowling attacks as strengths but England’s two wise old heads, Broad and Jimmy Anderson (who is likely to rest at Townsville as Broad plays), are rather different to the rapid Australian duo of Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins, who are supported by the metronomic Josh Hazlewood.
Broad and Anderson are busy plotting – rather scientifically – with Shane Bond, their bowling coach until the end of the Adelaide Test, how to strain on the attacking instincts of Australian batsmen and to play to England’s strengths. The coach, Trevor Bayliss, wants Broad and Anderson to “frustrate batsmen” and “get wickets through pressure, lack of runs bringing wickets”, and Broad agrees.
“We’re not going to blast the Australians out,” he says. “We don’t have a Brett Lee-type bowler who can bowl 95mph reverse-swinging yorkers. We have to do what we do. You have to adjust length a bit. If you bowl that slightly fuller length, you get belted.”
Accordingly, Bond has been placing marker posts at the side of the nets as England bowl to indicate the perfect length at the Gabba, which changes each day, according to Broad, who took six wickets in the first innings there in 2013, the high point of England’s series.
“This maybe means we need slightly more defensive fields,” Broad adds. “Look at the likes of Glenn McGrath and Josh Hazlewood, who just run up and belt length more often than not. Not getting too full. I don’t know if playing on egos is the right way to say it, but if you can cut off a few of their boundaries then you have more chance of them making a mistake. I don’t want to sound as if this is a negative plan because although it always looks great to have five slips and a gully, is that playing to our strengths on these pitches?”
Broad hopes to fulfil that Hazlewood-McGrath role, and is harking back to England’s victory in South Africa in 2015-16 for tactical inspiration – the swarm.
“We had a theory in South Africa that when a new batsman came in we’d swarm them for the first 15 balls or so: if they make any mistake, they are out. And if they score 20 off 15 balls, you can always drag it back. I’d like to do a similar thing again. If any world-class batsman is going to make a mistake it is going to be in the first 20 minutes. If they drive you through the covers three times, it doesn’t matter, but then settle into a more defensive field. You have to bowl a heavy length here to be threatening.”
Broad has spent the last two months straightening his run-up, so his fingers come right behind the ball and extract extra bounce.
“I don’t want to swing it,” he says. “That will be against my strengths to come here and bowl a full length looking to swing the Kookaburra. I want to do what McGrath and Hazlewood do, bashing away, bringing in both sides of the bat. I’ve done some good work and that will continue leading into the first Test. I feel like my time is coming.”
