Stuart Broad has not yet achieved the talismanic importance to the England team of an Andrew Flintoff, so the news that he jarred a shoulder in the opening match of the tour to South Africa on Friday is no cause for cursing cruel fate. A scan on Saturday revealed no lasting damage and he may be fit to play in the first Twenty20 international on Friday.
What should be more worrying is Broad’s fear that at the tender age of 23 he may have only five more years ahead of him before his body is broken under the ever-rolling wheel of international cricket. No wonder he has rushed out an autobiography.
“Burnout is a massive issue,” Broad told The Times before he flew to South Africa. “England are the only country who play year round. We have to try and manage the workload or players will be finished by the time they are 28 or 29.”
In the past 12 months, he played international cricket on 80 days — if it had not been for a hamstring strain last December and a knee injury in September it could have been 89 — and spent almost all the remaining days training or travelling: India to England and back to India, on to the Caribbean and then home to play West Indies, Australia and the World Twenty20 before flying to South Africa for the Champions Trophy.
Now he is back in South Africa, hoping to play 27 more days of international cricket before mid- January. There is a tour to Bangladesh, another World Twenty20 in the West Indies and then it all starts again, with a home series against Bangladesh beginning 11 days after the World Twenty20 final. If it was not for occasional niggles, allowing a brief respite, and England’s inability to reach the latter stages of competitions, Broad could get quite tired.
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“Our medical staff are clued on to what is happening but the problem is the schedule,” he said. “We have to take steps to avoid instances like with Freddie [Flintoff], who could have played a few more years but kept playing until he broke down.”
While not going as far as to say that he wants to skip the tour to Bangladesh in February and March, Broad said it would make sense for the ECB to rest key players. “We want our best XI out against the best teams and that means we have to rest them against the weaker ones,” he said. “You can never ask players if they want to rest, because no one wants to give away their position and risk not coming back, but you could tell them to rest.”
It was because of the need to take a breather that Broad resisted the courting of several teams who wanted him to play in the Indian Premier League (IPL) last season. “It was our only three-week break of the whole summer and winter and I needed to make sure I was in peak condition,” he said. “We’ll see how my body feels in the future, but as a bowler you have to be wary of your workload and speaking as an England fan, I wouldn’t want to see players go to the IPL and then not be able to play for England.”
Despite the weariness, Broad still enjoys top-level cricket two years into his England career. “It is a bit of a treadmill but you can’t ever run out in front of 30,000 people and not find it fun,” he said. It is the sense of fun that he feels is crucial to success.
“Many of our team have played their best when they have just thought, ‘I’m going to enjoy this’,” he said. “When you are relaxed and take it back to basics, you play better. I want the same feelings when I play for England that I had when I walked out for the school under-10s.”
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To that end, the presence of a livewire in the team such as Graeme Swann is crucial. The Nottinghamshire bowlers live a mile apart — “I can hear him when I’m at home,” Broad claims — and had several entertaining batting partnerships together during last summer’s Ashes as well as taking 14 wickets between them in the final Test at the Brit Oval.
“I love batting with him,” Broad said. “We try and match each other four for four — he calls it the Notts Way — and when you’re smiling, the crowd get behind you.”
Broad dislikes the constant comparisons to Flintoff, saying that No 8 is where he wants to bat, but adds: “I’ve got the ability to make a Test hundred.”
In two years as an England player, Broad has played under four captains. He was awestruck by Michael Vaughan — “It was special to play under him because I had followed him as an England fan before I was an England player” — but feels that Andrew Strauss is just as astute.
“He has a lot of Vaughan’s attributes,” Broad said. “Assertive, but calm under pressure. He has an aura about him and is a tough competitor, but he also listens to bowlers and tries to get us to work out what is going wrong. He has a way of talking that doesn’t stress you out.”
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The only flaw is Strauss’s occasional fondness for Churchillian flights of fancy in the pre-match pep talk. “He comes out with some strange quotations,” Broad said. “I’m not sure where he gets them. There’s one about a Chinese ploughman who was watching the rain and not his crops. He always comes up with a poem, too. It’s funny but he gets away with it. We just giggle.” And the team that giggles together, Broad believes, wins together.
? Bowled Over, Stuart Broad’s autobiography, is published by Hodder & Stoughton on Thursday, £18.99.