Stuart Broad’s perfect goodbye a fitting end to unique career

Aussie-baiting until the very end, in his 167th and final Test, Stuart Broad found a new trick to disarm opponents. At 10 past six on a sun-kissed evening at the Oval, with Australia threatening to pull off an audacious heist to win the series and England getting a little desperate, Broad became choreographer once more, switching the bails of Australia’s non-striking batsman around.

It is a curious ruse that Broad has picked up in his 38th year. There is no sporting logic in this act; instead, it is about bringing about a change of luck. “I thought switching the bails was an Aussie thing but must admit I might have made that up,” he explained.

It was a mind trick deployed by the Australians during the 2019 Ashes series, when spinner Nathan Lyon swapped the bails at the non-striker’s end during the 62nd over of the fourth Test, with Joe Root motoring along on 68. Three runs later, Root was gone, trapped at the crease by Josh Hazlewood. But not everyone in that Australia team is so familiar with it.

“I have never heard of swapping the bails as a lucky charm,” said Justin Langer, Australia’s head coach for the 2019 series. “Strange one that. I used to touch the bails between overs as a superstition.”

After his previous two consecutive deliveries had narrowly evaded the outside edge of Todd Murphy, Broad’s ploy signalled to the spectators, already febrile, to ratchet up the noise further.

And so, wearing his trademark white bandana – sported lovingly by dozens of imitators – Broad ran in while the crowd screeched in anticipation. From playing a bold, counter-attacking innings, Murphy was now a mere puppet: edging Broad to wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow. Broad veered away in his trademark airplane celebration, engulfed by his team-mates while laughing in disbelief. Then, just to complete the touch, Broad ran to the lucky bail to give his thanks.

It was an absurd moment – and yet it was entirely in keeping with the career of Broad, whose theatrical gifts have been indispensable to his bowling brilliance.

In a box at the Oval, his family hugged in disbelief. Among them was mother Carole; father Chris, an England Ashes hero himself; his sister Gemma, formerly analyst for the England side; and his fiancé Mollie King, a pop star turned radio DJ, with their new baby. Perhaps they could not believe the sight. Perhaps, as for all who have witnessed Broad’s career, this moment had just an air of the preordained.

England were now just one wicket way from clinching the match, with Australia still needing an unlikely 55 runs. Moeen Ali, like Broad, was playing his final Test match, defying a groin injury to bowl his off spin with venom.

Only, like Clint Eastwood in a shootout at the end of a western, it had to be Broad: the man who has taken more Australian wickets than any other man in Test cricket history.

Before each delivery, Broad – using his hands to rev-up the crowd in his customary way – was cheered on by chants of “Stand up if you love Broady”. The run-up before each delivery was a crescendo of noise, culminating in rapt expectation.

Fleetingly, the crowd celebrated the perfect finale in the 93rd over: a fine Broad delivery that moved away from Alex Carey, who edged it to Zak Crawley at second slip. Yet the ball hit Crawley’s wrist on the way, thudding agonisingly into turf.

But Broad’s moment would merely be delayed, not denied. In his next over, he once again kissed Carey’s outside edge; this time, the left-hander’s edge landed safely in the gloves of Bairstow.

The Test match was won, the series was level. On the field, Broad was up and away: “I just ran around like a headless chicken”. When he stopped, he was swiftly embraced by James Anderson, the other half of England’s greatest ever opening pair of fast bowlers. In the stands, strangers could be glimpsed hugging each other: such is the intoxicating euphoria of Ashes cricket.

The Oval is the ground of grand goodbyes. Often, the tears are not always of the celebratory kind. In 1948, Don Bradman needed four runs in his final Test innings to end with a batting average of 100; arriving at the crease to applause so fervent that he reputedly had tears in his eyes, he was bowled second ball for nought.

Broad now belongs to that rare category of sportsman: whose farewell combines the elixir of both individual and team triumph. Amid the bedlam, Broad helped himself to a well-earned stump: a small memento from his final Test match.

He took a moment for himself to soak in the acclaim on this magical evening, repeatedly looking around a ground on its feet. Then, Broad draped his arm around England’s other retiree – Moeen, whose three wickets were an apt ending too. He walked off for the very last time as an England Test cricketer, leading his country from the field. “To take a wicket to win an Ashes Test match being my final ball was something that will make me smile for the rest of my life,” he said.

For thousands of England fans, the thought of Broad in the Ashes will forever make them smile too. Fourteen years ago at this ground, while sporting golden locks, Broad’s five for 37 announced his transformation from a player of great promise to a Test-match cricketer of substance. His Ashes-clinching eight for 15, one of the greatest hours of English sporting endeavour, at Trent Bridge in 2015 was even more outlandish; Broad is the only Englishman ever to win player of the match in three series-clinching victories against Australia.

Yet Broad’s standing as one of English cricket’s best-loved cricketers does not just reflect his sporting deeds. While Broad gives everything of himself to the challenge of Test cricket, he never loses sight of the silliness too.

Such sense of mischief was detectable in his failure to walk in a 2013 Ashes Test after a huge edge to first slip, and then relishing Australian ire in the series Down Under that followed. It was detectable at Lord’s, when Broad made a great show of grounding his bat carefully after the controversial run-out of Bairstow. And it was detectable in his embrace of a new gambit at the Oval, switching the batsman’s bails. The very first time he tried it, in Australia’s first innings, a wicket had immediately followed; when it did so again in Australia’s second innings, Broad called it “freakish”.

Just as freakish, perhaps, is that Broad is unique in the history of Test cricket in ending his career by both hitting his last ball for six – an emphatic pull towards Archbishop Tenison’s School on Sunday morning – and taking a wicket with his last ball. All this, to go with a glorious midsummer’s evening, 25,000 chanting his name and a stirring English victory. There was no better denouement to a career defined by berating – and, often, beating – Australia.

Now, the most natural second career now looms for English cricket’s dramatist extraordinaire: television, where Broad will seamlessly slot into Sky Sports punditry.