Ashes 2023: Stuart Broad is the man most likely to seal Australia’s defeat

Fourteen years on from his 2009 heroics, Stuart Broad still knows how to upset Australia’s batsmen – and how to dismiss them too.

Stuart Broad remains the sharpest of thorns in Australia’s side. Picture: AFP

Much on Thursday was made of the parallels between this Test and the corresponding match in 2019. And with good reason too. The series situation was the same, with Australia heading into the final rubber having already secured the urn and holding a 2-1 lead. On both occasions, the Aussies won the toss and bowled. Both times Australia fielded poorly on day one. In 2019 England made 294 in its first innings, this time around it was 283. A loss to England four years ago soured Australia’s genuine achievement in becoming the first Aussie team to retain the Ashes away since 2001.

Friday too shared similarities with 2019 as Australia conceded a first innings deficit. But back then the tourists had already accomplished their primary mission. Losing at The Oval was a disappointment, but the Aussies would not have celebrated at Manchester as raucously as they did if they hadn’t viewed retention as the main game.

Stuart Broad remains the sharpest of thorns in Australia’s side. Picture: AFP

This time things are vastly different, with the Aussies having said both before and several times during the series that the goal was to win the series outright.

To do so they will need to dodge defeat here, and in that vein, what happened on Friday was much more in keeping with the disastrous events of another loss at this venue.

The 2009 Ashes series is something of a forgotten relative to the epic 2005 series.

Though some of the protagonists remained, both teams had undergone significant change since England won back the Ashes four years ago to end a 16-year barren streak.

It was a duel of two seriously flawed sides, one which featured blowouts and inexplicable momentum shifts. It was also the scene of Stuart Broad’s stunning emergence onto the Ashes landscape.

Broad, in his first Test series against Australia, had performed modestly across the first three Tests before taking 6-91 in a crushing defeat at Leeds.

Broad celebrates claiming Shane Watson’s wicket in the Fifth Test of the 2009 series.

It was at The Oval though where his impact was most acutely and devastatingly felt. In response to England’s first innings 332, Simon Katich and Shane Watson had guided Australia to 0-73 when Broad removed Watson lbw. In quick succession, he added the scalps of Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke, Michael Hussey, and Brad Haddin.

It all happened in the second session of day two.

By tea Australia was 8-133, the match and series all but relinquished.

Broad and Jimmy Anderson are the sole survivors from that match on either side featuring in this encounter. Anderson went wicketless in the 2009 clash and despite removing Mitch Marsh looked probably the least threatening of England’s frontline seamers on Friday.

But Broad, almost a decade and a half after first inflicting himself upon the old enemy remains among the sharpest of thorns in Australia’s side.

𝗡𝗮𝗺𝗲: Stuart Broad
𝗢𝗰𝗰𝘂𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Mind Games Extraordinaire

Incredible, Broady 😂👏 #EnglandCricket | #Ashespic.twitter.com/MdeuNgrN2F

— England Cricket (@englandcricket) July 28, 2023

He bowled terrifically during the first session of day two, regularly beating the bat and bogging down Marnus Labuschagne and Usman Khawaja. While it was Mark Wood who eventually drew the edge from Labuschagne, that had come only after Broad had cheekily switched the bails at the striker’s end for reasons best known to him. Mind games or not, it worked.

But the Aussies were still on solid footing when they resumed after lunch at 2-115, with Moeen Ali’s absence compounding the challenge for England. Within three overs it was 4-127, Broad having got Khawaja lbw and found Travis Head’s outside edge.

There was no five-wicket haul this time, but the match had shifted dramatically. Suddenly Australia’s middle order had been exposed. By tea Australia was 7-186, having lost 5-71 for the session. Fourteen years earlier it had been 8-72. An entire decade had been and gone, but the same man was doing similar damage in the same session of the same Test with comparable stakes.

Anderson steals the limelight for longevity, but this is the fifth successive Ashes series in England in which Broad has played all five Tests.

Asked before the series about the threat posed by his nemesis, David Warner quipped that Broad had to worry about getting selected first after being controversially overlooked for the first Test of the 2021-22 series.

By stumps, Broad had taken more wickets in this series than anyone else and looked a worthy contender to be player of the series.