Stuart Broad retires as one of just two seamers to have claimed more than 600 Test wickets, but where does he rank among the pantheon of the great fast bowlers?
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602 Test wickets (and counting); the most Ashes wickets for an English bowler; and a Test career that spanned the best part of 16 years. In terms of longevity, few seamers have enjoyed a career like Broad who bows at the age of 37, still somewhere close to the top of his game as the only England seamer to have played in every Test in the 2023 Ashes.
The rarity of his longevity is almost lost in the exploits of his opening bowling partner James Anderson. Anderson’s career is essentially unprecedented, for he is the only seamer in the last 40 years to play Test cricket past their 40th birthday. Anderson turned 41 on day four at the Kia Oval. Playing past your 37th birthday, as Broad has done, is still extremely rare. Other than Anderson, only Richard Hadlee, Courtney Walsh, Chris Martin, and Imran Khan have played regularly as seamers past their 37th birthdays in the past 50 years.
But a player’s legacy extends beyond longevity alone. Broad’s career average of 27.69 with the ball is the 19th-best out of the 28 seamers to take 300 or more Test wickets, but that figure represents a career spanning 16 years, and has seen him undertake various guises as a bowler, from the raw, short-ball enforcer in his early days, to the crafty tactician whose showmanship plays as big a part in his success as anything else.
It wasn’t until 2011, Broad’s fifth year as a Test cricketer, that he averaged under 28 across a calendar year. From the start of the 2011 home summer to the end of the 2016 season, Broad claimed 259 Test wickets at 25.95. No one in the world took more Test wickets over this period; Broad thrived in an era where bat still generally dominated ball. Interestingly, Anderson took a nearly identical 251 wickets at 25.90 over the same period. Over that six-year period, only Dale Steyn (20.93), Vernon Philander (22.09) and Ryan Harris (23.33) averaged less than Broad among seamers who featured regularly.
Broad was quieter over the next few years and ultimately saw his grip on a starting berth loosen to the point where he was no longer an automatic first-choice selection. Across 2018 to 2021, he occasionally found himself outside the England XI when fit, especially in Asian conditions. The one glaring gap in Broad’s overall record is lack of success in India; eight Tests in India yielded just 10 wickets at 61.70.
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Most famously, Broad was left out of the England side for the first Test of the 2020 summer. Not unreasonably, Ben Stokes, in his first Test as captain, opted for a seam attack of Anderson, Mark Wood and Jofra Archer. Broad responded to his omission in some style; first with a box-office interview on Sky where he voiced his surprise at the decision, and then on the pitch where he thereafter averaged 13.41 across the 2020 summer.
Broad may have over 600 Test wickets but on first glance, it’s not immediately clear what his super strengths are. He has never made best use of his 6 ft 6 frame to extract extra bounce, he has never really been a bowler of express pace, and he doesn’t possess as diverse an armoury as someone like Anderson. His great strengths lie in his ability to get on a streak and raise his game for the big moments.
His Ashes record is superb. No Englishman has as many Ashes wickets as Broad and his average (29.08) compares well to Anderson (35.81). And his tendency to rip through sides is borne out in the numbers; his strike of 19.9 when taking a five-wicket haul is the lowest of all time among bowlers with 15 or more five-fors. In other words, when he gets on a roll, there is no one quite as lethal as Broad.
There are few cricketers who enjoy the big moment quite like Broad has, there are few cricketers quite like Broad full stop.
