England couldn't regain the Ashes but throughout the series last year, Stuart Broad didn't let the home side miss an injured James Anderson too much, as he made the new ball talk in conditions suited for seam and swing bowling, especially while bowling to Australian opener David Warner.
Warner, expected to set the tone of the innings for the visitors, failed to counter Broad. He was dismissed seven times in his ten innings by the veteran English pacer and returned home with just 95 runs on the tour of UK.
“He is such a dangerous player and one of the best third-innings opening batsmen in the world," said Broad himself in a Sky Cricket podcast, explaining plans and the overall strategy used to overcome the major threat posed by the mighty southpaw.
"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."
The 33-year-old was prepared to be hit for occasional straight drives but the priority was to try and attack the stumps, and move the ball from there.
"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, who now has 485 wickets from 138 tests, also talked about his longstanding new-ball pairing with Anderson, England's highest Test wicket-taker with 564 scalps in 151 matches.
“I love the competitive side of cricket, the moment of winning, working a batsman out, getting a wicket, but he just loves any sort of bowling and is at his happiest just trucking in," he said.
(Inputs from Reuters)
