The Ashes: Stuart Broad bettering his bowling mojo
By the time Stuart Broad scalped Steve Smith in the first innings at Edgbaston with a treacherous leg-cutter, the latter had amassed 144 runs in an extraordinary effort with the tale to rescue Australia from a pit-hole.
Broad completed his five-wicket haul with Smith's breakthrough, which also saw the sun finally setting on the Australian team after a gritty effort from the lower order. The celebrations were muted, though, as both Broad and the rest of the English players realized that they had let it slip away and drawing first blood in the Ashes will not be a walk in the park anymore.
With the extra burden of shouldering the responsibility of spearheading the English bowling attack in Jimmy Anderson's absence, Broad seems to be only getting better as he gets more overs under his belt. And in the process, he has developed several techniques and methods to outsmart the opposing batsmen and entangle them into his fast-bowling guile.
For instance, his "quicker" leg-cutter is something that the Cricketing fraternity is not accustomed to seeing. Leg-cutters are usually loopy, slower deliveries with nothing behind them and they are released with a slight side-cut from the outside part of the seam. A right-arm bowler bowling a leg-cutter to a right-handed bat will make the bowl jag away after pitching.
But Broad's leg-cutter is quite unique. It may not even be classified in the section of "slower balls", since it's delivered at around 135 clicks. Broad has this incredibly unique delivery that almost feels like a fast leg-cutter. He releases it with a flick from his middle-finger to make it twirl like an orthodox leg-spinner's delivery. But there is no change of pace, no deceiving the batsman through the lack of pace.
Instead, it moves with a scrambled seam and after pitching, it bites off the surface and shapes away enough to graze the outside edges of the hanging bats. Slightly slower than his stock delivery but it's a sublime variation. And when it nags around the fourth-stump channel, batsmen are ought to feel for the ball.
If you observe the replay of Cameron Bancroft's dismissal in the first innings of the first match, we can examine that he picked the leg-cutter from Broad's hand and committed on the front foot early. But it never was an everyday leg-cutter, not the one where batsmen can pick it from the side of the hand, manoeuver the lack of pace and camp on the backfoot to squirt it through the off-side.
Rather, it was another Broad special. With a slight snap of the wrists, it doesn't zip away viciously like a Jimmy Anderson outswinger or a Shane Warne leg-break. It does enough off the pitch to keep the batsmen guessing and with no apparent change of pace, it usually carries to the slips cordon as well.
Another definite change in Broad's plans for the Australians was how full he bowled throughout the game, something we don't see him doing that often. Broad is known to stick around good length region and not give away easy drives but in the first Ashes Test, the tall right-arm pacer was pitching them all the way up to allure the visitors into playing false strokes.
Broad spoke about his surreal spell on the first day:
"The last month I have been challenging myself to make batsman play as often as possible. I have not been bothered by line and length, just focussing on getting batsmen to play every ball. My leave percentage today was down below 15 which is low because it can average at 25-26."
Despite reaching two landmarks in the game: taking his 450th Test wicket and also bagging his 100th Ashes prey, Broad would have wanted much more from the match than being handed a humiliating 251-run defeat when they were, in fact, reigning supreme and had Australia bogged down, midway into the first day's play.
Also read – Ashes Teams & Squads
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