England have a new men’s cricket MD, a new Test manager and captain, but veterans James Anderson and Stuart Broad remain to spearhead, once again, their attack on home soil. watch England vs New Zealand live on Sky Sports Cricket from 10am on Thursday
James Anderson and Stuart Broad are set to play England’s first test against New Zealand at Lord’s on Thursday.
‘The more things change, the more they stay the same.’
As endless as their Test careers may seem, it’s unlikely that James Anderson and Stuart Broad were the target when that phrase was first coined in the 19th century, but they might as well have been.
England start the summer of 2022 with a new managing director for men’s cricket, a new white-ball head coach, a new test team leader and a new captain too for the longer format, but conspicuous among Ben Stokes’ charges. for the first test. against New Zealand at Lord’s on Thursday are Anderson and Broad, spearheading, once again, an England test attack on home soil.
Anderson turns 40 this summer, with Broad celebrating his 36th next month, leading to talk of recent years of ‘load management,’ ‘squad rotation,’ and ‘succession planning,’ coincidentally, the point at which England net- ball thinking has become confused and its results increasingly disappointing.
In the litany of fast bowling greats, Anderson and Broad are literally the best in England, Anderson’s record 640 wickets placing him third all-time in Test cricket history (first among players fast bowling) and Broad’s 537 good enough for sixth place on the same list.
However, it was only a matter of months before they both had legitimate cause for concern about their international futures, only contemplating their cricket mortality when they were dropped from England’s touring team by the West Indies in March.
Anderson spoke of his “frustration,” “anger,” and “shock” at the time, telling the BBC Tailenders Podcast: “I pray this is not the end.” Broad, similarly, wrote in a daily mail columnthat the decision had affected his sleep and he woke up “every day more confused and angry”.
Both noted that despite their advanced age, they still held to the highest standards, and that is reflected in the statistics.
Anderson even said that “since I turned 35, my record has gotten even better.” He has an excellent average of 21.72 in his 44 tests since he turned 35 on July 30, 2017, compared to a career mark of 26.58. Anderson also returned the best average of any England bowler during their 4-0 thrashing of the Ashes over the winter, 23.37, as he took eight wickets in three matches.
Broad’s average has also improved over the last five years, and its returns in 2019 and 2020 are particularly noteworthy. Broad, England’s leading wicket-taker in the 2019 Ashes (23 in five Tests at 26.65), Broad ruled out David Warner a staggering seven out of 10 times as the Australia starter managed just 95 runs in total in the Serie.
A year later, when he was unceremoniously sent off from the first Test of the summer against the West Indies, Broad used it as fuel for arguably his best year yet for England, as he took 29 wickets at an astonishing 13.41 average during the rest. of the summer, earning himself a BBC Sports Personality of the Year nod in the process.
However, despite continuing to produce the goods steadily, over the last three years in particular, the couple’s playtime has been increasingly ‘managed’ or ‘mismanaged’, as the case may be.
His advancing age has been a factor, as has England’s eagerness for a more peaceful attack to take them to Australia’s spirited slopes in the 2021/22 Ashes – Mark Wood, Jofra Archer and Olly Stone identified specifically with that in mind. , but with only the former ultimately fit and available. Covid has also been an added complication, in terms of its effect on team harmony and management.
Theories were proposed that only one of Anderson or Broad should be selected for a given tryout, that they should be left out of certain overseas tours where releases were expected to be unresponsive (see: West Indies 2022), and should be held back for matches when conditions are most favorable for their abilities.
The result was England fielding a team with Anderson and Broad just five times in each of the last two years, and four times in 2019, although that had more to do with Anderson suffering at the time from a recurring calf injury. In the previous seven years, the pair failed to play fewer than 10 Tests together in a calendar year only once (eight games in 2014).
The disruption of England’s greatest ever new-ball pairing has been deeply felt during their recent desperate run of one Test win and 11 defeats in their last 17 games, not least when they were both overlooked to favor of Ollie Robinson and Chris Woakes for the first ashes. Test in Brisbane, in a green closer, and then quickly rejoined for the second day and night test in Adelaide, where the ball was expected to spin but did very little. England suffered heavy defeats in both.
Such confused thinking was a contributing factor in Chris Silverwood losing his job as head coach, following director of cricket Ashley Giles out the door. And it seems that the new regime has different intentions regarding the selection, of which Anderson and Broad are beneficiaries.
“I prefer them to play as much as possible,” Rob Key, the new England MD, said of the pair. “We’ll try to make the most of them while we still have them.”
Stokes said something similar about his reintroduction to the test squad: “The best chance of winning test matches is to pick your top 11 players and they’re part of the best XI, so yeah, it’s pretty simple.”
An injury crisis has further helped Anderson and Broad’s case: Wood, Woakes, Archer, Robinson, Stone, Sam Curran, Saqib Mahmood and Matt Fisher are currently unavailable for selection, but Key added at the time of his signing that the selection “would simply be made on which is the best eleven to win that first Test match… nothing more and nothing less”.
And, in English conditions, Anderson and Broad are incomparable. Four hundred and two of Anderson’s wickets have come home, including a staggering 23 of the 31 five in favor of his career. Although he has improved a lot abroad during his 19-year international career, his average is still above 30 compared to 24.20 in England.
Broad’s stats are similar, with 341 wickets, averaging 25.78, at home, including, famously, a career best of 8-15 in dismantling Australia at Trent Bridge in 2015, compared with 196 at 31.31 abroad.
How long they will continue to perform at the highest level is anybody’s guess, but there is certainly no talk of rest or rotation ahead of the first Test against New Zealand at Lord’s.
