England is gearing up for the battle of Urn in Down Under, where they will fight for the pride against arch rivals Australia. English pacer Stuart Broad is in no mood to leave any stone unturned before the action begins and said he will try to win England Ashes by playing on ‘Australia’s ego.’
Broad was not up to his usual mark and admitted this after playing the first warm-up game against Cricket Australia XI in Perth. He is hoping to form a new tuning with James Anderson with some tight line and lengths.
“We have to look at what we do best as a group. We’re not going to blast the Australians out. We don’t have a Brett Lee-type bowler who can bowl 95mph reverse-swinging yorkers. We’re not going to blast Australia out like Andrew Flintoff and Steve Harmison did in 2005. We have to do what we do. We have to adjust our lengths a bit,” said Broad.
The lanky bowler pointed over ‘Playing on Ego’ and added “I don’t know if playing on egos is the right way to say it, but if you can cut off a few of their boundaries then you have more chance of them making a mistake. I don’t want to sound as if this is a negative plan because, although it always looks great to have five slips and a gully, is that playing to our strengths on these pitches?”
He revealed the secret behind his team’s success in South Africa earlier in 2016, when they registered a 2-1 series win over there. Broad played a key role in the series win as he blasted the Protea batting line-up with some exceptional bowling.
“We had a theory in 2015-16 in South Africa that when a new batsman came in, we’d swarm them for the first 15 balls or so. That way, if they make any mistake, they are out. And if they score 20 off 15 balls, you can always drag it back,” he revealed. “I’d like to do a similar thing again. If any world-class batsman is going to make a mistake, it is going to be in the first 20 minutes. If they drive you through the covers three times, it doesn’t matter but then settle into a more defensive field.”
The 31-year-old will take the field with some good memories of Ashes. In the last battle of Urn in England, he bowled a furious spell of 8/15 to dismiss Aussies at a mere 60-all out. Meanwhile, Broad is planning to bowl something similar to that.
“I think I do have a match-winning spell in me, yes. Luck probably wasn’t with me during the summer. I know that if I get wickets in the first two or three overs of a spell, the likelihood of me picking up three or four is quite high. It was just one of those summers that catches seemed to go down so I never got into one of those spells. We know we have to take our catches to win here so there’s a lot of work going into that,” quoted Broad.
“I feel like I’m ready for one of those spells again. I’ve done a lot of work over the last eight weeks and straightened my run-up a huge amount to get my seam and fingers right behind the ball for the bounce. I don’t want to swing it, it will be against my strengths to come here and bowl a full length looking to swing the Kookaburra. I want to do what McGrath and Josh Hazlewood do: bash away and bring in both sides of the bat. I’ve done some good work. I feel like my time is coming,” he concluded.
The Ashes will undergo in Brisbane from November 23.
