England Ashes great Stuart Broad played one summer for Melbourne club Hoppers Crossing
He struggled in sixths but starred in ones, lost a lawnmower on the highway and still comes back for beers with the boys. PAUL AMY tells the brilliant story of a young Stuart Broad’s summer at Hoppers Crossing.
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He must be the most distinguished cricketer to have played for a local club’s sixth side.
Not that it helped his team, Hoppers Crossing.
When Hoppers met Keilor in a North Division 2 match in the Victorian Turf Cricket Association in November 2004, they did so with 18-year-old Englishman Stuart Broad in their XI.
Hoppers’ firsts had been washed out on the Saturday.
Not wanting to waste his weekend, the young all-rounder, in Melbourne playing club cricket on a scholarship program, asked if he could line up for a hard-wicket team on the Sunday.
He got his wish. He was picked in the sixths.
And so Broad, later to light up Lord’s and sundry other great cricket grounds around the world, turned up to Keilor Recreation Reserve for a 36-over game.
His Hoppers Crossing teammates from almost 20 years ago have regularly reminded him of it. The scorecard is still on the VTCA website, buried in the results listed as “other’’.
Broad batted at No. 5 and made seven, caught off the bowling of a fellow named Lee Falcke. He took the new ball and returned 0-8 off five overs.
Keilor won the match, finishing 8-138 in reply to 8-123.
“A few of the boys have brought those stats up – seven runs, no wickets – with him over the years,’’ chortles Mark Mitchell, Hoppers Crossing’s coach when Broad played for the club in 2004-05.
Falcke, a Keilor postie, cannot recall how he got Broad out – “It was a long time ago now,’’ he says – but he’s pleased that the scorecard is still around to prove it.
How often does it come up?
“Every time England play, just about,’’ Falcke says.
He does remember that the Keilor team that season was made up of local footballers, “a couple of old blokes and young kids … we didn’t train or anything like that’’.
A couple of his teammates have a memory of him opening the batting and whacking Broad for six.
Unfortunately for Falcke, the scorecard cannot confirm his boundary-clearer: he is listed as having gone in at No. 7 and made four not out.
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He failed to fire for the Sunday sixths, but Stuart Broad otherwise had a strong season for Hoppers Crossing.
At that time, Hoppers and Broad’s English club, Egerton Park, had a junior scholarship program, with the clubs sending each other promising players.
Egerton Park put on the plane a lad attached to County club Leicestershire; the son of English opener Chris Broad, who made a pile of runs on the 1986-87 Australian tour.
Hoppers Crossing, now in the Victorian Sub-District Cricket Association, is peacock-proud of its part in Broad developing into an exceptional Test fast bowler, the first flowering of his journey towards cricketing fame.
Mitchell says Broad had a slight build and was a fierce competitor.
He spent the summer living with long-time club curator Graham Said, his wife, Susan, and their children at Hoppers Crossing.
Some days he went to work with Said, mowing lawns and doing other property maintenance.
Said, 74, can remember the time a mower “ran away’’ from Broad and shot across the highway; luckily there were no cars around.
“He fell down laughing!’’ he says.
He says Broad was never less than respectful – “He was fantastic; couldn’t ask for a better person to stay with you, always willing to help with anything around the place’’ – and was more interested in playing cricket than socialising.
His ambitions matched his ability.
“He knew what he wanted to do,’’ Said says. “He always wanted to go to the nets and work on his game. He was very dedicated.’’
Broad has kept his contact with the Said family and the Hoppers Crossing players.
“The last Ashes out here, ‘Broady’ didn’t get picked in the Boxing Day Test, so he went out with the Hoppers boys for two or three nights, trying to beat his curfew of 11pm,’’ Mitchell says.
As for his performances, Mitchell thought he was “sensational’’. Broad won the club championship.
Opening the batting with Mitchell, he hit 374 runs at 31.2, with three half-centuries, in the Senior A1 section.
Opening the bowling, often with Paul Murray, he nabbed 16 wickets at 16.4, with a best of 4-29.
Mitchell says Broad should have taken more wickets.
“We dropped a lot of catches off him in slips, a lot of catches,’’ he says. “He was sharp.
“He realised after a while, around Christmas time probably, that he couldn’t bowl this first-class length, between your hip and just underneath your armpit. That’s what he was taught back home.
“When he bowled it on our wicket, blokes were just swinging him away, using his speed and his bounce. He learned that if he bowled full and at the stumps, he’d get wickets. Little things like that he picked up pretty quickly.’’
He says Broad fitted in well around the club and came on as a cricketer. The young Englishman also expanded his vocabulary, hearing colourful new words from a few opponents.
“A lot of guys took it as a challenge to go after him and he did cop a fair bit of flak,’’ Mitchell says.
“It probably helped set him up in the way he played cricket; he started giving it back as a young fella. He didn’t take a backward step.’’
Said agrees. He says Broad learned to give as good as he got and could be a “pretty fiery young bloke’’.
Chris Broad was a match referee in Australia that summer and dropped in to a few Hoppers Crossing games. Hoppers reached the semi-finals, where they lost to Druids.
Mitchell had only one gripe with Stuart Broad.
“You’d have a plan for someone coming in to bat and we’d tell him how we were going to set the field,’’ he says.
“Two balls later, he’s at the top of his mark waving his arms around and blokes are going left, right and centre.
“I let it go for a while but we sorted that out.’’
Mitchell got his own back when Hoppers Crossing played a local Sri Lankan XI in a charity match to raise funds for tsunami victims.
Broad asked to be skipper – “It’s the only time I’ll ever captain an Australian team,’’ he had said – and Mitchell, at first slip, delighted in moving the field around.
“Where have all my fielders gone?’’ Broad asked at one stage.
“Now you know what it feels like,’’ Mitchell shot back.
*****
Michael Tubb was also part of the Egerton Park-to-Hoppers Crossing exchange.
He had played junior cricket with Stuart Broad and followed him out to Hoppers.
Tubb liked Melbourne so much that he chose to live here permanently (he’s now married with two children and living in Altona).
When Broad returned to the UK after his stint in the Victorian Turf Cricket Association, his teammates were astonished at his appearance, Tubb says.
He’d had a growth spurt and was considerably taller and stronger. Egerton Park players and officials wondered what was in the water “Down Under’’.
“Even as a 16-year-old, he was quite a small, rotund little kid,’’ Tubb says.
“I don’t think any of us thought ‘Broady’ was going to play professional cricket, to be honest. It was only when he went over to Hoppers and learned the Aussie way of cricket … he came back and he’d gone from 5’8, 5’9 up to about 6’5. We almost didn’t recognise him, that’s how much he grew in those eight months. We couldn’t quite get our heads around it.
“Before he went, he was more a batsman and bowling first or second change, and the keeper used to stand up to him. When he came back from Hoppers the keeper certainly wasn’t standing up to him! I think the third ball he bowled for us went over the keeper’s head one bounce for four.’’
Tubb says Broad was “cricket, cricket, cricket’’, recalling how he played one-hand, one-bounce games during rain delays in play or at the tea break.
“He was just mad for it,’’ he says.
*****
In the current Ashes series, which England just kept alive with a three-wicket win at Headingley, Stuart Broad has taken wickets, taken blows to the body when he’s batted, and taken digs at the Australians over the Jonny Bairstow dismissal.
And Mark Mitchell has taken great pleasure in watching him.
He hopes Australia retains the Ashes. But he is also eager to see Broad continue to do well for his country.
Over the years, he’s regularly spoken up for his former Hoppers charge.
“So many people like to bag him but I’m like, hang on, he’s a good guy,’’ Mitchell says.
Broad made his Test debut three years after his season with Hoppers Crossing.
He’s now played 165 Test matches, taken 598 wickets and hit 3,640 runs.
At 37, he is wearing well – and wearing out David Warner.
Mitchell enjoys watching him.
“He plays like us (Australia). He doesn’t take a backward step and he’s aggressive all the time,’’ he says. “We follow him wherever he goes.’’
Mitchell coached Hoppers for a decade and then joined Altona.
His brother Greg is now president of Hoppers Crossing, which also counts Fawad Ahmed as a past player, the leg-spinner having walked in off the street looking for a game in 2010-11.
He grabbed 58 wickets at 11 in his second season, setting him on the path to bigger cricket.
*****
Just as Stuart Broad left an afterglow at Hoppers Crossing, his opponents from almost two decades ago bask in the fact that they encountered a young cricketer who ripened into a Test great.
Lee Fraser, now a talent pathways manager with the AFL, captained the Druids team that defeated Hoppers in the semi-finals.
Druids played Hoppers in round one and again in the semi. Fraser didn’t get to face Broad in either game, despite making a half-century in the first fixture.
“He was obviously known as the son of Chris back then,’’ Fraser says.
“He opened the batting and the bowling, so they (Hoppers Crossing) really fast-tracked his development. He had a bit of toe about him back then and he was also quite tough with the bat.’’
Fraser adds: “We often joke about it, some of the old cricket mates, how we played against him and launched his career.’’
He says Broad has been an “outstanding’’ cricketer, “just so competitive’’.
“Watching him bat the other night, he toughed it when they peppered him with the short stuff. Showed his character.’’
Hampton stalwart Anthony Quon has a copy of the scorecard from when the Seahorses played Hoppers Crossing, at the Boss James Reserve over two Saturdays.
On day one, Hampton crashed to 6-24 but recovered to reach a respectable 185. When CODE Sports reminds wicketkeeper-batter Quon of his innings of “70-odd’’, he’s quick to correct a rounding down of his score.
“It was 78,’’ he says, recalling his sturdy stand with Mat Pearson.
Broad took 2-36 off 17 overs and the following week, made 44 in the middle-order in a tight victory for the visitors. Quon has a good recall of the match and Broad.
“I think he was in the England Under 19s at the time and the story we got was that he’d been sent to Australia to play a bit of local cricket and harden him up a little bit,’’ he says.
“No one knew how the hell he’d got to Hoppers Crossing.
“He was sharp but obviously not as sharp as he is now. He was just a really good player. I remember talking to him at the tea break. He wasn’t a big, charismatic figure; he came across as quite shy.
“After making some runs against him, I thought, ‘Geez, that might be a nice little story one day’. The fact that he’s made a career out of it and he’s still around, I’m milking it while I can.’’
Quon is a schoolteacher and he shares the story with some of his students.
“If any of them come up to me and say, ‘Do you play cricket?’ I’ll go, ‘Oh yeah, let me show you this’. I’ve got a kid in my class who is an absolute cricket tragic. I got him on side and said, ‘You know Stuart Broad, let me find the scorecard’.’’
He doesn’t have to find it; it’s saved in his favourites.
Quon dines out on his 78 with his Hampton teammates, too. When Broad dismisses Warner, he will fire off a message, reminding them that only good players make runs against him.
Rob Ciccarella played for Bentleigh against Hoppers Crossing in that 2004-05 season. Broad and Mitchell opened the batting and put on 101, with Broad’s share 54.
Wicketkeeper Ciccarella watched from behind the stumps and saw a talented, tall young player.
“He smashed us. We all thought he was going to be like his dad, make a lot of runs,’’ he says.
“With his bowling, he wasn’t super-quick. He was only a pup. What was he, 18? I don’t remember him being that dominating with the ball. I didn’t think he was going to take 500 bloody Test wickets, that’s for sure.’’
Stuart Broad at Hoppers Crossing in 2004-05
Runs: 374 at 31.2
Highest score: 61 v Caulfield Grammarians/North Caulfield Glenhuntly
Wickets: 16 at 24.4
Best bowling: 4-29 v Seddon
Honours: Club champion
Originally published as England Ashes great Stuart Broad played one summer for Melbourne club Hoppers Crossing
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