Broad was inspired by Southee
Stuart Broad is such a student of the game. It turns out that he was inspired by studying Tim Southee this morning. “I saw from Timmy bowling this morning,” he tells Alison Mitchell. “When he rolled his fingers across a few, I saw them nip to Rooty and that was quite encouraging.
“My game plan was to try and hit the pitch as hard as I possibly can with the wobble seam. It was almost the perfect dryness of the pitch for my type of bowling – I could bowl it hard into the pitch but still bring the stumps into play.”
He smiles under his floppy hat. “It’s always nice when you get a few quality batters out bowled. My mum and step-dad are here … with the cyclone, it’s taken a lot for the fans to come and support us Baz’s mantra is just to entertain the people that come and watch us, and I think if you watched what we’ve done today, it’s been pretty enjoyable.”
And then there’s the record that he and Jimmy Anderson have just landed – the most Test wickets by two bowlers operating together. They now have 1005, four more than Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne.
“To go past two heroes of mine growing up – certainly we’re not in their category, the quality of those two, but to be up there with Jimmy, I feel very lucky. Very blessed to be in the same era as him. I’ve learnt so much from him in my career and I probably wouldn’t be still going if it wasn’t for him.”
Will Broad too be still going at 40? “No!”
That’s it from me. Thanks for your company, correspondence and views on whether hundreds matter any more. We’ll be back at 1am GMT to see if England can take five more wickets and secure their first win on New Zealand soil since 2008. That was so long ago, they had people in the team like Broad and Anderson.
Updated
Stumps: the day belongs to Broad
23rd over: New Zealand 63-5 (Mitchell 13, Bracewell 25) It’s a double change as Stokes turns to Joe Root. He races through an over with four men round the bat. Bracewell survives and there’s no time for the extra over that England are suddenly trying to manufacture. So that’s stumps on another memorable day in the life of Stuart Broad. He started the day as the nighthawk and ended it as England’s knight in shining armour, clean-bowling all of New Zealand’s top three and adding a nick for good measure. His first and last overs were rubbish, but everything in between was immaculate.
