Just after the 2019 World Cup, Australia and England met in the prestigious Ashes. Drama, action, crowd booing, ultimate contest and whatnot, the series had everything. The Aussie batting genius Steve Smith shimmered with the willow scoring 774 runs in 4 matches.
For England, Ben Stokes impressed everyone with his all-round performance. He was the second-highest run-scorer (441) in the series. Apart from Stokes, another big takeaway for England cricket team was Stuart Broad’s outstanding bowling, especially the way he terrorised Australian opener David Warner and made him his bunny in the series.
Warner was the biggest disappointment for the Kangaroos, as the ‘Pocket Dynamite’ scored just 95 runs in 10 innings. Broad, who finished as the second-highest wicket-taker by grabbing as many as 29 scalps, got Warner out seven times during the series.
Now, in an interview, Broad has revealed how he completely dominated the Aussie batsman with his brilliant swing bowling with a mixture of fiery pace.
“I did a lot of research going in as my record against him was really average. He is such a dangerous player and one of the best third-innings opening batsmen in the world. You know he can come in and take the game away from you if Australia has got a lead,” Broad told during the SkySports podcast.
After making the research, Broad found out that Warner was able to cut him or play a square drive quickly, so he decided not to give him any width and concentrate on hitting the balls at his (Warner’s) stumps.
“Having played against him a lot over the last eight or nine years, I found that, as I am a taller bowler, when he sat back in the crease he was cutting and square driving me a lot to the boundary. I decided I was just going to try and hit his stumps every ball. I was not going to try and swing it away from it as I felt that gave him width, I was just going to scramble the seam,” added the Nottingham born.
Broad even stated that he didn’t care a few boundaries if Warner hit straight back past him. His focus was not to provide any room to the destructive opener.
“If he hit it straight back past me for four, I’d be happy. I didn’t mind a few early boundaries if I could bring those stumps into play. I probably ended up bowling a bit fuller than I planned but it worked. Once I got him at Lord’s, the third time in a row, I just got that feeling like I was getting a bit of a competitive edge over him,” Broad added further.
