Stuart Broad took four wickets in five balls, including a hat-trick, as England racked up 19 wickets on the second day of their first two-day warm-up match against a President’s XI in Barbados.
As agreed before the match, England bowled for the entirety of day two regardless of how many batsmen they dismissed and as valuable as the wickets were for their bowlers’ confidence, it was more important for the players to get overs in the legs with just four days of match preparation scheduled before the Test series. In that respect, this was a good day’s work.
Broad, modelling the shortened run-up he has been working on, took the ninth, tenth and eleventh President’s XI wickets to fall after James Anderson and Sam Curran had made early inroads with the new ball, reducing the home team to 12 for 4. Curran, who missed the final Test in Sri Lanka due to injury, was given the new ball ahead of Broad, raising the prospect of the Surrey left-armer doing the same in next week’s first Test at the Kensington Oval if England think there might be swing on offer.
There were also wickets for Chris Woakes, Jack Leach and Moeen Ali as England enjoyed a stress-free day against a meek President’s XI batting line-up who could only muster 203 runs in total. Opener John Campbell, called up by Windies for the first Test to partner Kraigg Brathwaite at the top of the order, was dismissed twice in the day for the sum of just two runs, less than ideal preparation ahead of his Test debut.
“Maybe January 16 is my lucky day because three years ago I took six wickets at the Wanderers on this day but I guess it’s just a shame it wasn’t a Test,’ Broad said on Wednesday (January 16). “The most important thing for me was the rhythm of my new run-up felt good. I tried to ramp it up a bit in my second spell and the five or six overs I bowled in the afternoon were as good as I’ve felt for a long time.
“It was quite a ruthless performance. It can be easy in warm-up games to take your foot off the gas but we just continued to hunt wickets which is a really good habit to get into. I never really look at how many wickets I want to take in my career but I’d love to take three Test hat-tricks because I don’t think anyone has ever done that. Maybe today was good practice.”
Of Curran taking the new-ball ahead of him, Broad, who was involved in making the decision, said: “I’ve opened the bowling hundreds of times and it might not develop my game to do it in a warm-up but for a young bowler like Sam it can create a different pressure. It’s really good practice to try to set the tone in an England shirt.”
England begin their second two-day warm-up match on Thursday (January 17) against the same President’s XI at the same Three W’s ground in Barbados. Jos Buttler, Adil Rashid and Joe Denly, left out of the first game, are expected to get some game time.
