London, August 26: Any thoughts that winning the Ashes might be the summit of Stuart Broad’s ambition were firmly dispelled by the England rising star just a day after the team’s series win over Australia. “I want to play 100 Test matches for England, I want to be the highest one-day wicket-taker for England but more importantly I want to win World Cups for England and an Ashes series in Australia,” Broad told reporters at the team’s hotel here on Monday.
“I want to make England the best team in the world and that prospect is the thing that really excites me and makes me want to get out of bed every day when I have bowled 30 overs the day before.”
No wonder then that pace bowler Broad, whose father Chris, the former Test opening batsman turned match referee, was a member of the last England side to win an Ashes series in Australia back in 1986/87, insists he won’t have his head turned by talk of him becoming the new ‘Andrew Flintoff’. All-rounder Broad’s five wickets for 37 runs during Australia’s first innings collapse at the Oval saw him named man-of-the-match after England won the fifth Ashes Test by 197 runs and, with it, the Ashes 2-1.
The 23-year-old Broad, who has already appeared in adverts, has the potential to become the new poster boy for English cricket, particularly as the fifth Test was Flintoff’s last before his retirement from the five-day game.
But Broad, who plays for English county side Nottinghamshire, said: “I haven’t got the body to be posing in my underwear like David Beckham. I don’t think they have paparazzi in Nottingham. My dad has always said that cricket comes first. If you get your runs and wickets then everything else will take care of itself,” he added in response to reports he could earn millions of pounds in endorsements.
It may come as some consolation to Australian cricket fans that Broad cites Glenn McGrath as his pace bowling hero and credits a spell playing sub-district cricket in Melbourne for toughening him up. “McGrath has always been a role model for me ever since I was a really young lad.”
Broad, England’s leading wicket-taker in this year’s Ashes with 18, as well as two fifties with the bat, said. “What did he do? He just banged out length at the top of off-stump and ran it back into off stump and his record speaks for itself. If I could be half as good as Glenn McGrath, that would be fantastic.”
–Agencies–