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Stuart Broad announced his retirement at the end of Day 3's play of the ongoing fifth Ashes Test. As Stuart bowls in the final Test innings of his career, father Chris Broad recalled the moment he realised that his son has talent.
“Thank you to Leicestershire for seeing the ability of him as a bowler because I didn’t see that, and I was looking at his batting and I thought, well, I don’t really think he’s going to make it in first-class cricket as a batsman,” Chris Broad told BBC TMS.
“But they saw him as a bowler, gave him the opportunity.”
While Broad did manage to score 3,662 runs in Test cricket, it was his bowling that left him flabbergasted. On his T20 debut, Broad did not just impress former New Zealand skipper Stephen Fleming but his father too who was watching his son in action.
“I went to watch a T20 game between Leicestershire and Notts at Grace Road and Stephen Fleming was the opening batter and captain for Notts at the same time.
“Stuart bowled two or three overs at Stephen Fleming and he couldn’t get the ball off the square in a T20 game.
“And I thought then blimey, this chap can bowl.”
On his T20 debut for John Sadler-led Leicestershire, he took two wickets for just 19 runs in his quota of four overs. His economical spell helped Leicestershire defend a total of 137 and win the home game by 14 runs. In his debut T20 series, he turned out to be Leicestershire's second-highest wicket-taker with 12 wickets from eight games. His economy rate was highly impressive at 4.50 runs per over.
Just few months later, the Nottingham-born bowler made his T20I debut against Pakistan where he dismissed Shoaib Malik and Younis Khan. A couple of days later he made his ODI debut and dismissed Malik again in the rain-marred encounter which could not produce a result.
He had to wait for more than a year to make his Test debut. He picked up the solitary wicket of Chaminda Vaas in Colombo.
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