Aggressive, hostile and stubborn... I love him!

IT TAKES a lot more than natural ability to become a great international cricketer and Stuart Broad ticks just about every box. He has natural gifts, of course, and cricket is in the blood thanks to his dad Chris, who played 25 Tests for England, but what I admire about Stuart, as well as his incredible skill, is his ‘over my dead body’ attitude. Success means a lot to him. That attitude has made him unpopular with the opposition at times, and has even caused problems with England supporters, but he has never minded that because he will do whatever it takes to be successful. It is that feistiness, that aggression, that ‘dogf***’, as Duncan Fletcher used to call it, that I love in Broad but he’s also a very clever cricketer who knows exactly what he is doing with the ball. He is massively important to England. It is no coincidence that England sometimes underperform when Stuart is not playing, as they did in Dhaka, and Alastair Cook needs him there to lift the bowling attack and to work out plans. The other thing about Broad is that he is a game-changer. You only have to look at his match-winning spells against Australia at The Oval in 2009, Durham in 2013 and Trent Bridge in 2015 to see that. There was another against South Africa in Johannesburg earlier this year and it is remarkable to note that seven times in his Test career he has taken five or more wickets in a single spell. When he bowls like that the opposition seem to be mesmerisedesed and Broad becomess an unstoppable force. That eight for 15 inn Nottingham elevatedd Broad from being a very good bowler to a truly great one. That was a once-in-a-lifetime spell of fast swing bowling that anyone there will remember for the rest off their lives. It was typical of Stuart,art, too, that it came in a match where his partner in crime Jimmy Anderson was missing and Broad had to take on extra responsibility in one of the most important matches of his life. I admire Stuart, too, for not walking off in that earlier Ashes match at Trent Bridge when he had clearly nicked the ball, because a typically meek English cricketer would have done what was expected of him. I love how he never thinks he’s out and he always thinks his opponent is out when he’s bowling, whatever DRS might say, because it means that he has that genuine, stubborn self-belief that all great cricketers possess. I’m sure he convinced himself that he really wasn’t out that time in Nottingham. That incident became a huge controversy and he went down to Australia soon after it under immense pressure, with that Brisbane paper mocking him, but he won them over with his attitude and the way he handled himself.

Only Sir Ian Botham and Kevin Pietersen have won more Test man of the match awards for England than Broad and that tells you what a game-changer he has been.

He wins you Tests and he gets great players out, as you can see by his record against the likes of Michael Clarke, AB de Villiers and Hashim Amla. He made Clarke change his technique and almost forced him into premature retirement because he was all over him like a rash.

And he has won games for England in different conditions. He has adapted his game to bowl cutters when the pitch is not in his favour and he was magnificent when everything was against him in the UAE last winter.

THERE have been bumps along the way, as there will be with any cricketer who has reached 100 Tests. There have been a fair share of injuries for Broad. I sometimes look at him in the field and wonder how long he will be around for.

There have also been some self-inflicted bumps, like the time he thought he was England’s enforcer and started banging in the ball halfway down the pitch, which was blatantly wrong. He is clearly much better than that.

But he quickly realised that was wrong for him, and this is another thing about Broad: he can adapt, even in the middle of matches.

He did just that in the West Indies last year, when he had lost his action and his speed was down in Grenada. He assessed what he was doing wrong and put it right immediately. One of his biggest bumps hahas been the decline of hhis batting since he took that very nasty blow on tthe head from India’s Varun Aaron in 2014. He has never fulfilled the bowling all-rounder status that a big hundred against Pakistan at Lord’s in 2010 suggested would be his destiny. But he still averages just underd 2222, which makes him a very useful tail-ender.

The bottom line is that when Stuart retires, he will know that he wrung every ounce out of the ability he was given and that he was one half of England’s best ever fast bowling combination with Anderson.

Yes, Broad can be a little petulant, even arrogant, and does not court popularity with the pundits, but that’s because his sole focus is on doing well for England, not making friends.

If you are judging greatness on someone’s ability to win you a Test, then he is undoubtedly a great cricketer.