Posted by Stuart Broad has always been a bowler who makes the absolute least of his height. But Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum may have a plan…
Height is an attribute for a quick bowler. You don’t need data analysis to deduce this – a team photo’s enough. In most international teams the tall players are the quick bowlers.
There are plenty of exceptions obviously, but that doesn’t negate the fundamental truth. When the camera pans across your team’s faces during the national anthem, the first chest it hits will more than likely be a seamer.
This means that height has become a key metric for assessing bowlers. It is allied to a blunt assumption that bigger is better – but that isn’t actually the full story.
Stuart Broad is one of the finest examples. At 1.96m, Broad is much the same height as Morne Morkel – in fact he is often listed as being taller. Yet according to CricViz he releases the ball from 20cm lower.
With his bent front knee and curved torso at the point of release, Broad really does not make the most of his height. You wouldn’t call the bounce he generates skiddy, but you can’t really call it steepling either.
Excitingly, it sounds like England’s new Test leadership partnership has a strategy to address this.
“It’s been one of the most fun weeks we’ve had as a team,” said Broad this week. “Just the relaxed environment, the way we’re talking as a team. It’s not too structured, it’s just a case of what do you need to do to make you feel you’re 10ft tall?”
Imagine that! Imagine a 10ft Stuart Broad? Imagine the panicked giraffe batting if nothing else!
But imagine the bowling too. A 10ft bowler really would be a boon if Stokes and McCullum can somehow pull this off.
How do you make someone feel 10ft tall? You show faith in them and rather wonderfully it seems that one of the mechanisms that may be employed to embiggen the veteran seamer is sending him out to bat earlier “to go and have a slog”.
This was apparently one of McCullum’s potential plans during England’s successful run-chase against New Zealand at Lord’s. We can’t imagine this would encourage actual, physical growth, but we are very much in favour of this line of thinking anyway. Worth a go, isn’t it?
On a related note, Broad has also confirmed he didn’t have the foggiest what was going on for that secondary appeal of his the other day. Writing in The Mail, he said he was busy appealing for the LBW, “which wasn’t even hitting sixth stump down leg side so qualifies as one of the worst appeals ever.”
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It feels as if we’re reaching Prime Broad: even his action looked sillier in the first Test than I remember from his Ashes cameos. Although if he’s emboldened any further, he might start celebrappealing before the ball leaves his hand.
On the subject of bowlers and height: it occurred to me, while desperately trying to justify keeping Zak Crawley in the England team, that it wouldn’t hurt him to bowl a bit. Even a spot of half-decent off-spin from that height would be a useful addition, and it might calm him down a bit…
We always find it weird when a tremendously tall cricketer doesn’t bowl. Somehow, in our head, it’s a straightforward decision on whether or not to bowl that decides whether you become a Test bowler or not.
Will Jefferson first class bowling record:
Overs: 20 Runs: 60 Wickets: 1 Best bowling: 1/16
Excellent stattery. Wonder who the one was?
Stuart Broad is a big personality – an attribute which is in increasingly short supply throughout the sporting world.
But I hope this 10 feet tall thing is not intended as some sort of Brexity/Rees Mogg/Imperial measurements statement. We don’t need Stuart Broad to tell us that “I feel 304.8 cm tall” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Still, three cheers for Stuart Broad. He has an uncanny knack of conjuring up a magic spell and/or winding up the oppo.
Broad writes for the Mail?!
Oh dear God!! That’s a revelation I could have done without. Now I’m sad. 🙁