Ashes 2019: Why Stuart Broad’s spell of brilliant bowling should not be forgotten in England’s likely defeat

Third innings processions, where one team is miles ahead and trying to set up a declaration, are often some of the most forgettable periods of Test cricket. The bowlers are weary and demoralised, the batsmen are rampant, and someone generally scores an undeserved and overlooked century. Which is fine. Test cricket is too long, and too rich, and too epic, and frankly too full of boring bits, to remember in its totality.

When the time comes to write the history of the 2019 Ashes series, it’s likely Australia’s second innings of 186-6 declared won’t feature too prominently. In cricketing terms it’s placeholder text, an auxiliary to the more meaningful elements of this game: Steve Smith’s double-century, Mitchell Starc’s devastating spell with the new ball on the fourth morning, Pat Cummins’s spectacular double-wicket opening over, Joe Denly’s heroic unbeaten 150 to earn England an unlikely draw on day five. Perhaps.

And so the odds are that Stuart Broad’s duel with Smith here on a watery Saturday afternoon will end up largely forgotten. It was a wonderful, absorbing passage of play that meant absolutely nothing; a moral victory for England that probably ended up reducing their chances of actual victory; a perfect encapsulation of Broad’s own England career that perhaps even Broad himself won’t be able to recall. And so it’s worth recounting here, if only as a reminder that sometimes, the good bits of Test cricket are the bits nobody remembers.

Australia were 16-2 when Smith walked out to face his first ball from Broad. Effectively, though, they were 212-2, and with the greatest batsman on the planet now at the crease, the only real point of interest was not how many Australia would score, but how quickly they would do it. For England, it was a case of damage limitation, of keeping things tight and taking as much time out of the game as possible.

Except nobody seemed to have told Broad. His second ball was a dirty grubber that hit a bump on the pitch and barely got off the ground. Most batsmen, on receiving that delivery, would have ended up clean bowled or plumb LBW and stalking back to the pavilion shaking their head ruefully. Somehow, however, Smith reacted in time to jab a bat down on it. The Old Trafford crowd, cold but well-oiled, roared their approval.

And having spent most of the series doing pretty much what he wanted with the ball, for most of the next few overs Smith could barely middle one. He miscued a drive just short of mid-on, swished and missed at a good-length ball in the channel, earned a fortuitous two runs after trying to withdraw his bat, left a ball that nipped alarmingly back and came within fractions of shaving his off-stump.

For those few overs, the scoreboard or the scoreline could scarcely have mattered less. Even the wicket of Marnus Labuschagne, LBW to Jofra Archer at the other end, felt like something of a sideshow, a scene that Broad was still able to steal by merrily waving at Labuschagne as he walked off. Meanwhile, he was plotting the downfall of the biggest fish of all. There was an aborted pull to square leg. A fast off-break that hit Smith high on the pad. Another play and miss. Another miscued drive.

Somehow, Smith survived. But then, this is the gift of all the great athletes, be they Muhammad Ali or Novak Djokovic. During those periods where they look most vulnerable, most uncomfortable, they somehow reach deep into the place from where they simply refuse to be beaten. By the time Broad returned for his second spell shortly before 5pm, Smith was well set, the ball older, and Australia’s lead largely impregnable. Now, when Broad pitched it full and straight, Smith simply whipped him for four, just as he knows how.

In between balls, Broad would amble deliberately back to his mark, rapt in thought. Often when a batsman is in command, discouraged bowlers quickly switch into autopilot mode. Broad, even on his worst days, hardly ever gives this impression. He’s always thinking, always plotting, scouring his vast and complex library of memories for something that might help him out.

Smith, meanwhile, is usually doing something similar. On Friday evening, after scoring his double-hundred, he had tried to explain what goes through his mind during his long, epic innings. “You go through different stages,” he said. “There are times when the runs can be free-flowing and you get a few boundary balls. Then guys bowl a good spell and you’ve got to switch back on, or be a bit more disciplined. Generally when you score runs, people try a few different tactics to you. So you have to be switched on.”

Great batsmen often give the illusion of equanimity. This is particularly true of batsmen like Smith, who can make batting look so laughably facile that it’s possible to wonder whether he’s even thinking at all. But the battle never really ends. And so it was again here: as Australia looked for quick runs to set up the declaration, the Broad-Smith duel moved into its next phase. A perfectly acceptable length delivery on off-stump was smeared over mid-on for four. Next, Smith backed away about three yards in an attempt to upper cut. Broad followed him, and a surreal dot ball was the result.

In all, Smith faced 41 balls from Broad, and scored 33 runs: not including five comical wides that Broad sent down the leg side in an attempt to follow Smith again. On the basis of those numbers alone, you’d struggle to wonder what the fuss was about. And yet in a way this was one of the great contests of the summer: far richer and more nuanced than Smith’s duel with Archer, at Lord’s, for example. Yet it lacked two essential elements. First, the defining blow that would have settled it one way or the other. Second, it came in a third-innings declaration scamper that in the context of the game, ultimately meant nothing.

It was strangely fitting, then, that no sooner had Broad been removed from the attack and replaced by Jack Leach, Smith was out: miscuing a big hoik to long-off, and striding off for his lowest score of the series. In many ways, this has been the story of Broad’s career: a whole-hearted assault characterised by relentless skill and bags of character, which for all its stunning successes still feels a trifle underrated. For many, Broad will always be the foil to James Anderson’s unquestioned genius, the next man to be dropped, despite taking 463 Test wickets and delivering some of the greatest spells ever seen by an England fast bowler.

Even his efforts in this series, where he has bowled as well as he has done for several years, look set to end in defeat. Should England lose heavily nobody will remember how well Broad did this summer, just as nobody remembers how brilliantly he bowled in a catastrophically lost cause during the 2013-14 whitewash, just as nobody will remember that for a spellbinding hour at Old Trafford, he made the world’s best batsman look like a Division Two dasher. But that’s the glory and the curse of cricket: you don’t always get what you deserve. Sometimes, that’s true of life as well.