From being ‘frustrated, gutted and angry’ after being left out in the first Test against West Indies to finish the series as the leading wicket-taker despite playing a match fewer, Stuart Broad has come a long way.
Broad also became the second Englishman and the seventh player in the history of the game to surpass the 500-wickets mark in the second Test.
In his recent interview to The Mail, Broad revealed that he even considered bidding adieu to the game after missing the first Test against West Indies.
“Were there thoughts of retirement going round my head? 100%. Because I was so down,” Broad told The Mail.
“It’s not like I can move from Man United to LA Galaxy. If you are not playing for England, you are not playing for England. You always catastrophize when you are in a hotel room on your own.”
“You are sitting alone in a room and it feels worse than it is. The cold facts were I had been left out of one game and I would probably play the next but my mind wasn’t thinking like that,” he added.
The 34-years-old remarked that the trauma of missing the Southampton Test didn’t let him sleep for two days.
“I was stuck in that hotel. I couldn’t go anywhere. It wasn’t like I could go back to Mollie [girlfriend] and have a barbeque and chill out and reassess. I wasn’t playing, I was staying in a single room. I didn’t sleep for two days. I was nowhere. A different decision could definitely have been made with my emotions of how I was feeling.”
Broad further expressed his gratitude towards Ben Stokes, the stand-in captain of the first match, and said that the latter played a pivotal role to help him in coping up.
“But because I have got such a good support network around me, my mum, dad, sister, Mollie, that helped me through. And Stokesy was brilliant. Stokesy knocked on my door on Thursday night and stayed in the corridor to talk to me. He said: “This isn’t about cricket, but how are you, mate?” That was very impressive for him to do,” Broad concluded.
