It was probably not how Stuart Broad envisaged reaching the landmark, and not merely because David Warner was not the man to fall. But moments after tea here at Old Trafford, a ball banged short into the deck was hooked by Travis Head to the man in the deep and Broad became the fifth - and who knows, perhaps the last - man to reach 600 wickets in Tests.
“There was a clip that came up in the changing room of my 100th, 200th – they were caught long-off, caught long-on, caught midwicket - so they’re not the old classical dismissals,” Broad laughed afterwards. “The good thing is it was caught by our leading catcher ever in Joe Root so I can tell my grandkids it was caught first slip.”
If the mode of dismissal was not straight out of Broad’s playbook, then the occasion certainly was, the Ashes on the line and England in need of victory to set up a series decider at the Oval next week.
Having already snared the series’ form batter, Usman Khawaja, at the start of the day, Head’s scalp was Broad’s 149th wicket against Australia, a new record surpassing Ian Botham, the seamer, like a double-crossing agent, pointing to the role the enemy of yesteryear played in moulding a friend turned foe.
“I grew up completely obsessed watching Ashes cricket and I suppose that's why some of my heroes are [Shane] Warnie, Glenn McGrath, some of the great Aussie team,” Broad said. “I probably grew up with a bit more of an Australian mindset rather than a sort of England mindset of the nineties.”
It was also on the first day of an Ashes Test on this ground that Warne collected his 600th Test wicket, James Anderson, Muttiah Muralitharan and Anil Kumble the only other players to have crossed the threshold before Broad. Will any follow?
Nathan Lyon is the next most prolific active bowler, and may yet have an outside sniff. The spinner is on 496 poles and looked certain to romp past 500 in this series before being hit by a calf injury. He will be 36 by the time he next plays Test cricket but moved from 400 to his current mark in little more than 18 months. Ravi Ashwin is also closing on 500 and currently filling his boots in the West Indies, but is already 36 and contemplated retirement earlier this year. The closest active seamer is Tim Southee of New Zealand - 230 wickets behind Broad.
So, then we are into the hypotheticals of what might even be achievable in an era when Test cricket in so many countries is, inarguably, a diminishing priority and bowlers with sufficient thirst for the format to shelve more lucrative white-ball gigs in the hope of prolonging Test careers are, understandably, in short-supply.
Stuart Broad takes his 600th Test wicket! 🙌💫 pic.twitter.com/w9BYEM7Tnp
— Sky Sports Cricket (@SkyCricket) July 19, 2023
Broad, who played his last white-ball game more than six years ago, has taken 166 Tests to reach 600 wickets, the slowest of the five men to have done so. But even Murali’s freakish rate of six wickets per game across his first 101 Tests might not be enough to get a bowler of future generations over the line as the volume of red-ball cricket declines.
Take Kagiso Rabada, for instance, with nine years, 60 Tests and 280 wickets under his belt at a strike-rate more efficient than any bowler in history with more than 250. The problem? That South Africa are due to play only 28 matches across the five-year Future Tours Programme that runs from now until 2027, meaning that even if Rabada played every single one (highly unlikely for any bowler, let alone a quick) at the same incredible level of potency, he would still reach his 32nd birthday barely past 400.
A spinner may one day get there, less susceptible to injury and the stresses of multi-format workloads. A bowler from India, Australia or England - the big three who, for now, retain packed Test schedules - might play enough matches to give themselves a mathematical chance.
But there is, on the balance of probabilities, every possibility that Broad will be the 600 Club’s final entrant. For a player who has always been about more than mere statistics, that is not a bad one to claim.
