Stuart Broad has worn many hats for England over the last few years. While also, it should be said, always wearing the same actual hat, the classic floppy, alpha hat in any professional team, a hat that says: yes I’m comfortable with this, I walk in my own space out there. And also, I look a bit beanpole-ish in a cap.
Those hats, then. Hype man. Distraction magnet. Lord of misrule. Master of physical comedy. New-ball craftsman. New-ball bluffer. Arch bender of rules. Robust and upright guardian of the rules (delete as appropriate).
This is not an exhaustive list. Beneath the hats are other hats and other Broads. But it felt like pretty much all of them were on display on the second day of this gripping fifth Ashes Test, which threatened to turn on 40 minutes of High Broad-ism at the centre of the day.
During that slow period, as Australia batted with a strange sense of melancholy in pursuit of England’s first-innings score, Broad took two and a half of the three key wickets to fall. The half was key too, a moment of career-high Broad-housery from the master, and a perfect expression of his ability to affect the cricket even when he’s not actually involved in any cricket.
It should be said that this quality of non-cricket, the cricket that happens between the cricket, has become a huge part of Broad’s game. Not least this summer when he has produced surely some of the greatest non-cricket ever seen in an Ashes series.
Here that moment arrived with the morning session edging soporifically towards lunch and Marnus Labuschagne producing a kind of lithium cricket, nine off 82 balls, an innings that lacked even the basic energy required to qualify as “scratchy”. At which point, with Mark Wood midway through another hostile over, Broad decided to walk past Labuschagne as he patted the pitch and turn the bails around in their grooves.
Er … what? Players sometimes do this as tic, a fidget to induce a change of luck. But not generally three seconds before one of the most controlling, details-obsessed batsmen in world cricket is about to face a ball from England’s quickest bowler.
Labuschagne, looked back, seemed either baffled or aggrieved, dragged out of his bubble, then prodded at the next delivery and was brilliantly caught edging to Joe Root’s outstretched left hand.
Frankly this was masterful stuff, inspired non-cricket from a 37-year-old who has threatened to dominate the non-cricket theatre of operations in these Ashes.
Here is a list of some of Broad’s non-cricket highs to date. Single-handedly voided the previous series. Invented the away swinger just to get Marnus out. Said the Carey/Bairstow run-out was literally the worst thing he’d ever seen in cricket. Said Zak Crawley clumping a four through the covers in a losing Test match was the greatest Ashes thing he’d ever seen. Spooked Alex Carey. Spooked David Warner. Successfully re-annoyed what seems to be the vast majority of the Australian public.
And through it all Broad has kept on producing spells like the one just after lunch here. Not quite the classic destroyer-of-worlds spells of his prime, where the air seems to shift, the birds fly backwards through the sky and the clock strikes Broad o’clock. But a shortened version, the taster menu portion, just enough to open up the day.
England needed it too, with Australia still only one wicket down as Broad kicked off after lunch bowling fuller and straighter, his fifth ball floated up at 80mph and enough of a surprise to beat Usman Khawaja’s prod playing across his exposed pads. Broad was already at the other end, already jazz-handsing it by the time the finger went up.
This stuff is part of his act too, the character he portrays when he bowls, the head-banded disruptor, lighting rod of the crowds. Broad twirled his conductor’s finger. He vaulted in. He summoned the spirits (vaguely). Travis Head eased an on-drive to the fence, then feathered an edge off the next delivery, a leg cutter to the left-hander, a beautiful ball really, evidence of the perfect control Broad has these days of the angle of his wrist.
Broad had two for four in 12 balls after lunch and at 127 for four Australia were paddling for a while at the Oval. There was a funny moment to come as Broad sent down another of those super-deadly 80mph nippers and saw the ball lifted back over his head with laughable ease by Mitchell Marsh, who seemed in that moment to have swished back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz. Broad looked baffled, disbelieving that such a thing could be possible or indeed morally acceptable (presumably that six will at some stage be voided from the scorebook).
But by then his work was done. England had an opening to work away at, as they did with mixed success. Broad, who has played every home Ashes Test since 2005, had extended his considerable lead as England’s top wicket taker in the current series. Before this Test there was talk of last things, of farewells to the old men of the Bazball summer. Broad has hardly looked like someone reaching the close. Whatever happens here, there may yet be a great deal of non-cricket left to play.
