Broad horror show as he goes for 35 in an over
NO sooner had he revelled in reaching one milestone, Stuart Broad was mourning a rather less welcome record.
For the England legend, yesterday at Edgbaston should have been remembered as the day he became only the sixth Test bowler to collect 550 wickets.
Instead, Broad will want to forget all about a morning in which he suffered the ignominy of conceding the most runs ever from a single Test over.
The 36-year-old is already the owner of the joint most expensive over in Twenty20 internationals, having been smashed for six sixes by Indian Yuvraj Singh at the 2007 World Cup. But Broad now also holds a second unwanted world record after an extraordinary exchange against India’s No10 Jasprit Bumrah.
He went for a mind-blowing 35 runs in a shambolic eight-ball set, which led to Nasser Hussain accusing him of ‘losing the plot’ for persisting with bowling bouncers at the tourists’ tail.
The previous most costly over in Tests was 28. That has happened three times, the bowlers being England’s Jimmy Anderson and Joe Root, and South African spinner Robin Peterson.
‘Sad to lose my record today,’ joked Peterson on Twitter. ‘Oh well, records are made to be broken I guess. On to the next one.’ For Broad and England captain Ben Stokes, however, it may be harder to move on. Broad’s day began with him celebrating that more favourable landmark as he dismissed Mohammed Shami with just his fourth delivery. However, it was his third over of the morning that will go down in history. And England’s nonsensical short-ball tactics were firmly to blame for the nightmare that unfolded. Despite Anderson having just shown the merits of pitching the ball up when he cleaned bowled centurion Ravindra Jadeja, Broad went on a bumper barrage from the Pavilion End — and Bumrah could barely believe his luck.
The stand-in India captain pulled the first ball for four, then watched the next delivery fly over his head for five wides. He then top-edged a front-foot no-ball bouncer for six, smashed a full toss for four and edged another one to the fine-leg boundary. Finally, Bumrah swung successive half-trackers away for a four and six before scrambling a single off a yorker.
‘Sometimes you think you’ve seen it all. Then this game shows you you’re a student in life, you’ll see something even more bizarre,’ said ex-India coach Ravi Shastri, who commentated on Broad’s 36-run over to Yuvraj 15 years ago in a T20 clash (pictured left).
Meanwhile, England legends were lining up to lay into Broad’s bowling. ‘They were poor tactics,’ said former skipper Hussain. ‘There are three stumps there for a reason. The reason they are batting No 9, 10, 11 is because they can’t keep the good ones out. There is a bit of ego and frustration. Broad knows the problem he’s had against the short ball and he goes short and then you completely lose the plot.’
However, Anderson, who took five for 60, backed up his fellow paceman, saying: ‘That’s the plan Ben wanted Broady to go with and Broady stuck to it. On another day when the luck was with Stuart, he’d have probably got a top edge straight to hand. That’s the ploy we’ve used to the tailenders all summer and it’s worked. I tried to be more orthodox. It can be unpredictable with tailenders.’ Bumrah’s assault on Broad meant India racked up 78 runs in 59 minutes, with the skipper finishing unbeaten on 31 from 16 balls. And for all the transformation we have seen under new coach Brendon McCullum and captain Stokes this summer, the passage of play was eerily familiar to the second Test of this series at Lord’s last year.
Then, Shami and Bumrah put on 89 in an unbroken ninth-wicket stand on the final day, extending India’s lead from 182 to 271. England were then rolled for 120 inside two sessions, with then captain Root admitting: ‘Tactically I got a few things wrong.’