THE DAY STUART BROAD WENT ALL GOGGLE-EYED!
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STUART BROAD produced one of the great Ashes spells at Trent Bridge. His first morning figures of eight for 15 were insane. It was a one-man show and Australia just couldn’t handle him. Eight edges, eight catches behind the wicket. Australia 60 all out.
The most pleasing thing about it all for me was that I had been complaining to Chris Taylor, our fielding coach, in the build up: ‘Mate, we do so much work with you on these speculative catches — 10 minutes every fielding session — yet it never pays off in a game. Those kind of catches just don’t come along.’
Funnily enough, I had nearly latched on to a full-length drive at Edgbaston in the previous Test [in last year’s Ashes], but the ball had just gone over the top of my fingertips.
What chance of another coming along?
Broad’s reaction to my one-handed claw at gully to dismiss Adam Voges will forever be an image synonymous with the Ashes. The crowd ooh-ed and aah-ed as they showed the replay on the big screen, and then his ridiculous shocked face, goggle-eyed with hands over mouth, came into view as the cameras panned around.
The first thing I thought when I took it was, ‘At last, I’ve finally got one.’
My response when I got up from the turf was to raise the ball up towards the home dressing-room balcony.
Then, as my team-mates mobbed me, I raised the other arm to point again. It was an acknowledgement to Chris that all that extra work had paid off after all. I have never taken one better.
I’m not in the catching positions that often, the ball had gone past me, but the intensive practice had made the difference.
It was the start of a stunning seven sessions of cricket for us — the time it took to move into an unassailable 3–1 lead.
By the end of the day, Joe Root’s second hundred of the series had put us 214 runs ahead.
By lunch on day two, Australia had begun batting again needing 331 to avoid an innings defeat.
Yet for a 90-minute period either side of the interval we became passive.
Waiting for something to happen, it felt like we had switched off completely. Australia’s opening pair of David Warner and Chris Rogers had put on more than 100, and for the first time in an England shirt I was close to losing my rag with my team-mates.
We were bossing them but it didn’t feel like we had the kick in us we had shown the previous day.
Mark Wood had taken a wicket off a no ball, some Australian fans were getting stuck into me in the crowd, and I wasn’t having it.
I felt we were in need of a gee-up, so when Woody did make the breakthrough I roared into the huddle: ‘For f***’s sake, lads, you would think we were the team however many behind, not them.’
People have suggested I couldn’t bowl any better than I was to do for the remainder of that innings. Yeah, I bowled well and of course I enjoyed myself, but quite honestly I didn’t feel I ever had 100 per cent rhythm.
Because it was swinging so lavishly I was letting the ball do all the work. I was running in quite wildly, dipping in and out on my approach, and the ball was coming out at only 82–83mph. I was putting in all my effort but the ball was just plopping out, and that is what happens to a bowler when he doesn’t have rhythm. It comes out a lot slower than you are aiming for. Normally I would be up at 86–87mph. But because I was putting it into decent areas, things were happening. It was developing into an amazingin atmosphere. As the wickets tumbled,tu people around the field were reminding each other, ‘We haven’t won the game yet.’ Of
course, we knew we had. There was no chance they were going to come back from this. It was only a matter of when, and that was exciting. I claimed five of the seven wickets o fall on that Friday, yet it still might have been considered a surprise that Cooky ignored the claims of Broad to open the bowling and threw the ball o me and Wood at the start of that historic Saturday.
I was hoping that would be the case and you can imagine it felt pretty cool when he told me in the dressing room I would be starting at the Radcliffe Road End.
I loved being at the centre of things. I still take more joy out of scoring a hundred but I haven’t taken as many five-fers in my career, so I was raring to do it in an Ashes series, and to make that six before Woody delivered the final blow just before midday.
To win the Ashes back meant we achieved the main goal of our 2015 summer. When conditions were in our favour we were clinical.
When they were not — at Lord’s and in the series finale at the Oval — we were not so good and were defeated by huge margins.
But a series victory by any scoreline was what we were after.