Stuart Broad said if he could change one rule in cricket, he would make no balls a free hit in Test matches, as part of a wide-ranging interview with James Anderson a week on from his retirement.

Speaking during a feature on Sky Sports coverage of the Hundred, where he and Anderson were asked questions by a group of children as well as Simon Doull and Nick Knight, Broad was asked what rule he would change in cricket.

“In Test cricket I would make a no ball a free hit too,” said Broad. “Because you might have your three slips and gully in and cover in and all that, but if you bowl a front foot no ball – it’s easy to say now [that] I’m done, isn’t it? Punish the bowlers – but I would make every no ball a free hit because how good would it be to be sat in the crowd with all the fielders around the bat and then the batter could just whack one out of the ground?”

Currently, when the bowlers send down a no ball in Test cricket, a run is added to the batting team’s score, and the bowler has to rebowl the ball. In white-ball cricket, the rebowled ball is a free hit, where the batters can only be run out.

To the same question, Anderson responded with “I’d get rid of a few rules and Laws because there are too many – it confuses me – but I can’t think of anything off the top of my head.”

During the interview, Broad asked Anderson about the latter’s retirement date. Broad had himself announced at the end of play on the third day of the final Ashes Test, at the Kia Oval. He finished the game by taking the final two wickets of the match to secure a tight England win and level the series.

“We’d tried to have the odd conversation very lightly in a golf club a week before,” said Broad. “But I obviously didn’t know then, that was just picking Jimmy’s brain. We had a nine o’clock bus leave on the Saturday morning and I texted Jimmy saying, shall we do an 8.45 coffee run? I thought I’ll get Jimmy on his own and I’ll tell him then. But we got followed by two cricket fans into Starbucks to get the coffee so I couldn’t get a moment with him.

“I really wanted to tell him but I’d be telling two fans who were stood by us. So we got on the team bus maybe five minutes early and I just said look Jim, put my hand out and shook it and said, that’s me, it’s a really hard thing to say but it just feels like the right time and we had a hug. Then I told Sky that night.”

Broad and Anderson played in 138 Test matches together, and shared over 1,000 wickets in those games. They have taken more wickets in games involving each other than any other bowling duo, surpassing Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath earlier this year.

What would Test cricket be for Anderson, without Broad? “I’m not sure actually. It’s still quite fresh. I think I’ll miss him definitely because I feel like he’s someone, as we’ve just talked about, he’s been so good with me. If something’s not going well he’ll be able to correct it and find out what it is, almost having that safety blankett there. It will be different, we’ve gone through this as cricketers all the time.

“I nearly said I lost Alastair Cook, when he retired five years ago, it was different not having a friend there. But at the same time, you’ve just got to take it on the chin and enjoy the memories that we made together when he was playing.”

Did Broad regret his decision to retire? “It’s hard to tell, it’s hard to look how I’ll feel in the future but ultimately, a week on – it was about this time last week I was on the field for the last time – I think ultimately for me, not many professional sports people get to choose their time to leave a field and know that it’s their last time walking off and those memories that I’ll hold are very special.

“Walking off with my teammates, walking up into the changing room and giving all the management, all the people who have helped me up along the way a hug, sitting down and taking my bowling boots off and I actually felt really at peace with the decision. Of course there will be times, next time Jimmy is on the field bowling in India I’ll flick on the telly and be like, ‘I wish I there, I wish I was playing’ but everything has to come to an end at some stage and ultimately for me my memories are going to be so special that I’ll probably just lean back on the really positive ones.”

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