I almost quit after first Test axe
Broad opens up on the anger and pain of being left out of first Test
STUART BROAD mentions Tom Brady and volunteers that tomorrow is Brady’s birthday. He knows the greatest quarterback in the history of American football is 42 and that he is about to turn 43. He knows he played in four Super Bowls for the New England Patriots since he turned 37 and won three of them. He knows he won the Super Bowl when he was 41. And he knows that, even though Brady has moved to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, America is still rooting for him.
In these isles, Broad thinks, things are done differently. We treat age differently. In sport, we treat age as an impostor and we try to banish the player it is accosting. And it does not matter whether the player is bowling better than he has ever bowled before and with more hunger than he has ever had and is fitter than he has ever been and whose numbers keep getting better and who wins and wins and wins.
The sub-text here is the first Test against the West Indies last month when Broad, who is 34, was startled and upset when he was dropped. The sub-text here is that when he was recalled, he responded with 16 wickets in two matches at an average of just over 10. In the course of those match-winning performances, he became only the fourth seam bowler in history to take 500 Test wickets.
Shane Warne, the great Australian spinner who is one of six bowlers to have taken more Test wickets than Broad, mused publicly that Broad could go on to take 700 wickets and not settle for 500 or 600. And so it is hardly surprising that Broad is becoming exasperated by the juxtaposition of his greatness with the selectors’ willingness to jettison him and the recurring question: ‘Is this the beginning of the end for Broad?’
It is not that he feels his numbers entitle him to a place in the team. Broad does not get carried away with what he has achieved. He says that being among the top seven wicket-takers ever to have played the game does not put him even in the top 20 bowlers in the sport’s history. He talks about watching his great bowling partner, Jimmy Anderson, in the nets, open-mouthed in admiration for Anderson’s control and skill.
‘Sometimes I watch Jimmy in training and I think: “Wow”,’ says Broad. ‘He has got it on a piece of string. I can’t do that.
‘My biggest strength is internal. I am competitive. I have a steel about me that will never give up in any way shape or form and I think you can win from any position. I like to think I can cause momentum shifts in matches. There is something in that mindset that keeps me going and going.
‘Do I think I’m in England’s best XI? Absolutely. Do I think Jimmy Anderson is in England’s best XI? Absolutely. Did last week probably prove that? I’ll leave that up to you.’
Again, it is hard to argue against him. ‘Into the gallery of greats he goes,’ said Michael Atherton on Sky as Broad trapped Kraigg Brathwaite lbw in the third Test at Old Trafford for the landmark dismissal. And yet even as Broad walked through the doorway into the pantheon of the greatest bowlers in the sport, he was still smarting from the impression there are those who cannot wait to pension off him and Anderson, who is four years older and only 11 shy of 600 wickets, to cricket’s retirement home.
‘The one thing that does really interest me,’ says Broad, ‘is we are a natural partnership but we do get put in the same bracket all the time.
‘People say: “When Anderson goes, Broad will go”. I mean, I am four years younger than him. He is 38, I am 34. That’s quite a big difference in sport. If someone is 23 and 27, you are writing or saying completely different things about them.
‘I feel like sometimes I get written off quickly, which was highlighted at the start of this summer. There was a lot more of the “This is the beginning of the end of Broad” stuff. This isn’t me comparing myself or Jimmy to Tom Brady but if Tom Brady was English, do you think he would still be playing and do you think he would be lauded like he is at 42, nearly 43?’
The fact that the pain of being dropped is still jostling with the satisfaction of being anointed one of the greats tells you everything you need to know about Broad. He is intensely driven. He is sad that cricket is playing to empty stadia. He misses the crowds. He knows how important the fans can be to the momentum of a match. But, ultimately, he says, the hunger comes from within. The fans are important but it is the contest that consumes him.
But being in England’s bio-secure bubble at the Ageas Bowl in Hampshire for the first Test made his bewilderment at being left out worse. There was no sanctuary. He could not go home to spend time with his girlfriend, Mollie, or with family. He was staying in a hotel at the ground. He had come back from lockdown fitter and hungrier than ever and now he was trapped in cricket when he felt that cricket had rejected him.
‘I have not really told anyone this but I was so down that week of the first Test,’ says Broad. ‘I was really low. I was stuck in that hotel. I couldn’t go anywhere. It wasn’t like I could go back to Mollie and have a barbeque, chill out and reassess. I wasn’t playing, I was staying in a single room. I didn’t sleep for two days. I was nowhere. A different decision could have been made with my emotions of how I was feeling.
‘But because I have got such a good support network around me: my mum, dad, sister, Mollie, that helped me through. (Ben) Stokesy was brilliant. He knocked on my door on the Thursday night and stayed in the corridor to talk to me. He said: “This isn’t about cricket, but how are you, mate?” That was very impressive for him to do.
‘Were there thoughts of retirement going round my head? One hundred per cent. I was so down. I expected to play, which is always a dangerous thing but I felt I deserved to play. If I had had a different conversation with the coach the day after and the coach had said: “You are not in our plans...” well, if you are not in England’s plans when you are bowling as well as you can, you are pretty screwed.
‘When we were in lockdown, if you had said to me: “If your career was to end now how would you feel?” I would have said: “I’m good, I’ve loved it, I’ve had some great memories, I could walk away really content and happy, I’m very fortunate to have got where I’ve got to”.
‘Then, when that became reality before the First Test and I get told I’m not playing and theoretically I might never bowl another ball for England, I was angry. It made me think: “I’m not happy to finish now, I’m not ready to leave the game”.
‘Am I happy with my life? Of course. Am I happy for my career to finish now? Absolutely not. I feel a burning desire to keep winning Test matches, keep getting that feeling. Hopefully I will burn that out. Because I think it’s a dangerous thing to leave the sport you love with that burning desire still there. That’s when things can go the wrong way. For now, though, let’s keep that fire burning.’
ENGLAND eased to a four-wicket win over Ireland in their second One Day International at the Ageas Bowl.