McGrath can help me win the Ashes!
BROAD REVEALS HE’S BEEN WATCHING VIDEOS OF AUSSIE PACE ACE AND SAYS...
It would send shivers down Glenn McGrath’s gangling spine if he thought he was providing even inadvertent help to England ahead of the Ashes. As one of Australia’s most patriotic sportsmen, McGrath’s customary pre-series role has been to joyously predict a pummelling of the Poms. this time, however, McGrath (below) has become a case study in Stuart Broad’s quest to dismantle the hosts’ batting and keep the urn in English hands.
Broad, 31, has spent the past fortnight preparing for his third Ashes tour by practising with half a dozen Kookaburra balls, trying to emulate the modus operandi of test cricket’s most prolific fast bowler.
‘In Australia you have to hit the pitch as hard as you possibly can. You look at McGrath and he did that consistently,’ Broad says.
‘I’ve been watching some Youtube videos of him bowling in Australia, visualising how to get wickets as a tall bowler. You have to have periods where you look to rough batsmen up a little bit, sure, but a lot of wickets fall from that fuller length.
‘In the past, if we’ve made a mistake in Australia it’s been to bowl too short, so you get cut and pulled off length.
‘this time, I will be making a conscious effort to bring batsmen forward, just like we did as a unit through last summer. try to expose any movement by getting them on the front foot would be my message.
‘Jimmy Anderson and I pride ourselves on adapting to the pitch quicker than the opening batsmen. when you are playing away that’s harder, but we know certain types of bowling can prosper. Ryan Harris had a lot of success in Australia. How? He pitched the ball up at good pace.’
Broad and Anderson, a new-ball duo with 894 test scalps between them, will be working, for the next month at least, with New Zealander Shane Bond, a bowling consultant with, Broad says, a wealth of experience of ‘playing on flat wickets in that part of the world’.
of the Kookaburra ball, Broad adds: ‘It’s not got as big a seam as the dukes but it’s a nice new ball to bowl with. our biggest challenge as a bowling unit will be that 30-to-80over period, so we will be practising with older balls when we get to Australia because that’s where you win and lose test matches. How do you change the momentum when the ball’s doing nothing? we need to find a way to do that.’
Broad has been a qualified success in Australia: he took 21 wickets in the whitewashing of four years ago while injury curtailed his contribution to the 3-1 win in 2010-11. He was back home immediately after England went 1-0 up in Adelaide. ‘I see this as a box I still need to tick, definitely,’ he says of adding an away Ashes win to his c.v. ‘It’s the biggest tour you can go on and the toughest as well but this is the most excited I have been before one and that stems from the fact that it’s probably the most exciting
team we are going over with. You look back at 2010-11 and we were very disciplined. It was a group of consistent, grownup blokes who just got the job done, whereas this is a free-spirited team.
‘Someone could hit a hundred off 90 balls, or we could lose three wickets for no runs. we are set up to play our natural game, and that makes it a very exciting team to play in because you don’t know what’s going to happen.’
only once last summer, Broad recalls, did captain Joe Root remind his team that with freedom came responsibility — immediately after they unravelled for 133 against South Africa at trent Bridge in July.
It might also relate to their off-field ventures. England will fly to Australia on Saturday without Ben Stokes, who remains at home to discover whether he faces a criminal charge for his part in an early-hours fracas in Bristol in late September.
In the absence of England’s vice captain, it would be natural to assume Broad — the third candidate to be interviewed for the top job earlier this year — is promoted.
However, he insists: ‘If Stokes is not there I don’t think anyone needs to step into that role particularly. I believe the leadership skills he has shown in the past 18 months will carry on being an influence.
‘He’s very good at offering the arm around the shoulder. He doesn’t necessarily look like that sort of character, but he’s brilliant at saying: “don’t worry about that spell, the next one’s important”, or: “It’s not quite going your way but it will change for you”.
‘All those sorts of things will stay within the team, as will his competitive spirit, because he’s played such an integral part in the lead-up.’ Stuart Broad, an ambassador for The Belfry Hotel & Resort, was speaking at its PGA Golf Academy, where he was being custom-fitted for a new driver ahead of the Ashes.