The seam bowler eventually took his 100th Test wicket for England but it came gift-wrapped
Stuart Broad on bended knees stared at the turf in a mixture of disbelief and despair. Another delivery had beaten the outside edge and still he was searching for that elusive 100th Test wicket. He stared again at the innocent strip of grass when at third slip Alastair Cook, giving a fair impression of Gary Sprake, the old Leeds goalkeeper, on one of his bad days, failed to hold on to a chance from Thisara Perera.
Sometimes Broad declined to stare ? especially at the umpire Aleem Dar after another lbw appeal. In fact it was more a celebration than an appeal as if it was bleeding obvious that the shout was about to be upheld.
Umpire Dar is the last man on earth to be hoodwinked like that. Thus the so-called inquiry was politely declined. Still Broad remained wicketless. In the circumstances he kept his exasperation in check, which has not always been the case. But he was exasperated all the same and who could blame him?
This is no terror track but there has been some encouragement for the quicker bowlers. When Jimmy Anderson was operating in his first spell, tormenting Mahela Jayawardene no less, it looked as if Sri Lanka would do well to reach 275. Yet the magic elixir has deserted Broad in Wales. He kept charging in, of course, taking on the extra burden created by Anderson's back problems.
All professional bowlers have passed this way, experiencing the perceived injustice of bowling pretty well for no reward. And only the coldest, clinical of characters can avoid the obvious trap, which is to start straining too hard for wickets, to try to do too much with the ball in attempt to redress the betrayal, which is the absence of anything in the wickets column.
Broad bowled some fine deliveries, but then the temptation to go hunting became irresistible. That sometimes involves pitching the ball a little fuller to entice the drive, to find the edge, but inevitably the ball just flies away to the boundary. Or the bouncer is tried once too often and it is just too predictable and swatted away. Or the ball is delivered just a little too straight only to be clipped away to the leg-side.
The confidence to keep banging the ball down on a length just outside off-stump in the knowledge that the wickets will eventually come is easily eroded especially after a long, barren trot, which is what Broad was experiencing. Remember he has been making a comeback of sorts here in Cardiff.
In Australia, where he bowled well enough in Brisbane and Adelaide he got just two wickets for 161 runs. Then he was sidelined with his side injury. In his two matches this summer for Nottinghamshire there were five wickets but he could not impose himself as we would expect an international bowler to do. For all the maturity beyond his years, Broad can suffer from a dearth of confidence like anyone else.
Eventually the 100th wicket came, but there was not much celebration since the game was already slipping away from England. It came in the most mundane of ways, politely gift-wrapped by the muscular Perera.
After all the near misses and the jaffas that passed by unedged, the Sri Lankan mistimed an attempted biff and the ball went in a gentle parabola to mid-on ? hardly the classic way for a paceman to take his Test wickets. Broad had been compelled to bowl 31 overs for that scalp.
At another time Broad's place might be queried after such a modest performance, but that is unlikely to be the case now for a variety of reasons. The England camp like to show confidence in their men; there is also the possibility that Anderson may not be fit for the next Test at Lord's; more unusually Broad was paraded at the start of the season as one of the triumvirate, albeit a junior member as Twenty20 captain, that was going to take England forward.
Of course, there is no logic in the Twenty20 captaincy ensuring that Broad retains his Test slot ? and down the line the selectors could drop him from the red-ball game. But in reality his recent elevation probably helps him keep his place. A few more wickets would help even more.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/may/27/stuart-broad-100th-england-wicket
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