Stuart Broad

England Test captaincy play-off

So Alastair Cook’s an England captain (one-day internationals) and Stuart Broad’s an England captain (Twenty20). But which one will go on to become the REAL England captain – the one who’s in charge of the Test team?

Is this really the way to do it. Is this really the plan now? Auditioning?

Do they both have to captain England before a decision can be made? Couldn’t the selectors have devised a series of competitive events to gauge their skills instead?

We suggest the following:

• Mano a mano coin-tossing
• Handshakefulness evaluation
• Long-range vague arm-waving (against the clock)
• Taking the positives from a shocking defeat oral test

And while we’re on this subject, can we express our grave displeasure at the unrepresentative nature of the current England captains. There are three of them now and they are all public school boys, defiling the air at press conferences with their hideous, grating received pronunciation accents.

We miss Michael Vaughan.

Stuart Broad’s going to need…

More ties!

From Stuart Broad’s Twitter feed:

“There can’t be a worse advert at the moment than Just For Men! ‘I’m gonna need more ties!’”

We are currently in a ‘love’ phase in our ever evolving relationship with the ‘more ties’ advert. Broad probably watches less cricket than we do, what with being on the field and all, so we’d guess he’s in an early stage of what will become a long and tempestuous relationship.

How many ties does a man honestly need? We have two; one for weddings and one for funerals.

Jonathan Trott and Stuart Broad v Pakistan – what a partnership

One’s a balding, short-arsed, right-handed batsman. The other’s a boyish, lanky bowler who bats left-handed. Together they gave James Anderson the longest wait of his career.

Trott and Broad caused Pakistan’s bowlers no little distress as well, which was entirely unexpected given the circumstances. Mohammad Amir started the day taking four wickets for no runs and Broad arrived at the crease with England 102-7.

Number nines don’t generally score Test hundreds from that position and it was even less likely in a summer where the value of a run has inflated astronomically with every passing innings.

For the bowling side, an eighth wicket partnership like the one between Jonathan Trott and Stuart Broad is like having the shit kicked out of you by a baby panda. For hours.

The five best all-rounders over the next five years

Not sure we’ve got Imran Khan or Garry Sobers on the cards, but it’s not looking bad.

Shakib Al Hasan, Bangladesh, age 22

As a cricket-writer, we’re worried there’ll be no words left in a few years time, because they’ll all have been eaten by Bangladesh criticisers. Shakib Al Hasan will make people backtrack until they’ve returned to the womb. He is the best one-day all-rounder in the world and he is 22. He is not going to get any worse at any point in the next decade. Dwell on that.

Dwayne Bravo, West Indies, 26

Played a bit. Been solid. Time to push on, Dwayne.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni, India, 28

The most dangerous batsmen are those who can destroy an attack but don’t feel that they have to. For Dhoni it’s all about the runs. He’ll get them in singles, he’ll get them in ugly works to leg. He doesn’t care. He also doesn’t care about his average. He just wants to win matches.

Matt Prior, England, 27

No, seriously. Matt Prior has been one of the best batsmen in England for quite a while and being as everyone seems to have gone a bit quiet about his keeping, that must be acceptable as well. Despite his hairline, he’s actually 27. He could prove a very important player in the next few years.

Stuart Broad, England, 23

Don’t talk him up? Tough shit. We’re starting to believe that he can bowl, which is the main thing, while he’s got bags of time to sort out the batting, which has largely been okay anyway.

An Ashes win equals big money

You’re an England player. You’ve won the Ashes. You get in touch with your agent:

“Commercial opportunities. What have you got for me?”

Your agent’s silent a minute and you can hear him shuffling some papers on his desk.

“Hello. Are you there? Commercial opportunities. What have you got?”

Your agent clears his throat and says: “Er… belts?”

Matt Prior clearly did some DAMN GOOD WORK on this photo shoot, but Stuart Broad seems to be a rank amateur, so they made him say some stuff as well:

“I absolutely love the Druh Belts range and the colours are just amazing. They’re perfect to wear on a casual night out with jeans or with chinos and a jacket for a more formal look that is just a bit different.”

Everyone loves chino-friendly belts.

Stuart Broad snatches the all-rounder baton off Andrew Flintoff

Andrew Flintoff should keep a close eye on all his cricket gear. Stuart Broad will have his bats, his pads and even his box given half a chance. He’s not waiting until the big man’s gone before taking over.

When Swann got North, we yelped like a female coati. When Broad bowled Haddin, we went up an octave. It sounded like a baby Bongolava mouse lemur had been kicked in the nuts.

We’re far happier seeing an England all-rounder of the future scything through Australia like a laser through hot butter. It bodes well for the future.

How accurate are cricket speed guns?

You would have to say that cricket speed guns aren’t hugely accurate. They seem okay most of the time, then every now and again you get a wonky match where everbody’s bowling at 93mph.

This is what happened at Lord’s a week or so ago when England’s bowling attack suddenly turned into Brett Lee, Shoaib Akhtar, Michael Holding and Jeff Thomson. Tim Bresnan is sharp, but he’s no Malcolm Marshall. Graham Onions hits the bat hard, but he’s no Waqar Younis.

In one-day internationals speed guns often seem to be 3-4mph more generous. Bowlers only get a maximum of ten overs, so they can give it a bit more oomph, but you’d think they’d bowl maybe just the odd effort ball in a Test match.

Yesterday, we noted that Stuart Broad bowled a ball at 92mph. We’re going to take that with a pinch of salt, but being as James Anderson was bowling at around 87mph – which is pretty much his normal Test speed – maybe the speed guns weren’t miles out. At the very least, it’s an indication that Broad is quicker than he used to be.

Pace isn’t everything, but it is something.

Stuart Broad’s hair

Stuart Broad appears to have been to a barber’s in India. We’ve deduced this by the fact that he’s now got a nice, sensible side-parting, where before he had an effete, highlighted mullet.

If you go to a barber’s in India, you can ask for what you like, but more often than not, what they’ll hear is “a nice, sensible side-parting please”. We had multiple haircuts in India. They were inevitably nice, sensible side-partings.

If Stuart Broad is a wise man, then he’d also have asked for a shave. Getting a shave at a barber’s in India is one of the best things a man can do. You get a brilliant facial massage and you can pretend that you didn’t know it was going to happen. A facial massage while retaining a firm and robust sense of your own masculinity – what could be better?

We write altogether too many updates about cricketers’ hair, don’t we? We don’t care. We have a firm and robust sense of our own masculinity.

Stuart Broad wins a match

Stuart Broad hasn’t really been taking wickets in Tests, but in one-day internationals he’s been increasingly incisive. Even so, 5-23 against South Africa is a Will Jefferson step for him.

He hasn’t got any more talent than he had this time last week, but hopefully this kind of domination of a top batting line-up will give him a sense of certainty in his own decisions and actions that will allow him to do the right sorts of things on flatter tracks than this.

And he should feel buoyed. Look at who his wickets were: Graeme Smith, Herschelle Gibbs, Jacques Kallis, Jean-Paul Duminy and Johan Botha. No tail-enders there and that first trio have torn so many bowlers a new one that there’s a massive ‘new one’ surplus the size of Dhaulagiri somewhere near Cape Town.

Technically Trent Bridge is Broad’s home ground, but it barely counts because he was at Leicestershire last year and has been with England most of this year. Trent Bridge is good to English bowlers full stop. Obviously this means that it isn’t hosting an Ashes Test – just like that other deliriously happy hunting ground, Old Trafford.

Ravi Bopara and Stuart Broad given the ultimate honour

What were you doing when you were 21 or 22? We were mostly not leaving our room for weeks on end and feeling kind of numb inside. Not Stuart Broad and Ravi Bopara. They were exhibiting extraordinary amounts of steel in rescuing a disastrous one-day international run chase in front of thousands and thousands of people.

We’re not sure the scale of their achievement was properly expressed in the highlights. India had been dispatched for just 212. England had just lost the only batsman who’d seemed remotely competent – Paul Collingwood – and had fallen to 114-7. It was only the 24th over. Wickets had been tumbling.

Again and again we’d hoped someone would stick around and again and again batsmen hadn’t. Paul Collingwood had looked likely and now he’d gone. The English supporters in the crowd had given up and were occupying themselves by starting Mexican waves and shouting at the stewards. This was the context of the match.

The crowd were to entertain themselves for quite a bit longer, but we were watching. Stuart Broad and Ravi Bopara went about their business and about an hour later they’d started to win the crowd back over. They faced and conquered every Indian bowler with excellent shots, sensible thinking and some great cheeky-bastard singles.
Slowly, one by one, people said to each other: ‘Listen. Put down the beer snake. Something’s happening here.’

THAT’S the scale of the achievement. Stuart Broad and Ravi Bopara batted so well and rescued what had seemed such a lost cause that drunk England fans, at the end of the day, when they’d been drinking for the longest, actually put down their beer snakes and watched the cricket in near-silence.

That’s some performance.

England v India, fourth one-day international at Old Trafford
India 212 (Yuvraj Singh 71, Sachin Tendulkar 55, Stuart Broad 4-51, James Anderson 3-38)
England 213-7 (Stuart Broad 45 not out, Ravi Bopara 43 not out, Ajit Agarkar 4-60)