England bowler Stuart Broad has lifted the lid on how he dominated Australia batsman David Warner during last summer’s Ashes series.
Broad dismissed Warner seven times across the five-match series, with the Australia opener scoring just 95 runs in ten innings.
Despite Warner’s struggles at the top of the order, Australia still managed to retain the urn with a 2-2 draw against Joe Root’s England.
Reflecting on the series and his dominance over Warner, Broad told the Sky Sports Cricket podcast: ‘I did a lot of research going in as my record against him was really average.
‘He is such a dangerous player and one of the best third-innings opening batsmen in the world. You know he can come in and take the game away from you if Australia have got a lead.
‘Having played against him a lot over the last eight or nine years, I found that, as I am a taller bowler, when he sat back in the crease he was cutting and square driving me a lot to the boundary.
‘I decided I was just going to try and hit his stumps every ball. I was not going to try and swing it away from it as I felt that gave him width, I was just going to scramble the seam.
‘If he hit it straight back past me for four, I’d be happy. I didn’t mind a few early boundaries if I could bring those stumps into play. I probably ended up bowling a bit fuller than I planned but it worked.’
Broad, England’s second-highest wicket-taker in Test cricket, added: ‘Once I got him at Lord’s, the third time in a row, I just got that feeling like I was getting a bit of a competitive edge over him.
‘Little things, like he’d come and talk to me in the morning. That’s something he’s never done as he is such a strong competitive character.
‘He was just trying to find out what was going on. He asked me in the warm-up at Lord’s whether I had meant to nip it up the slope and I was like “yeah, yeah, yeah” but of course I hadn’t!’
Broad, 33, has taken 485 wickets in 138 Test matches for England, a figure bettered only by team-mate James Anderson.
The Nottinghamshire seamer currently sits seventh on the list of all-time wicket-takers in Test cricket.
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