Ashes 2013/14: Stuart Broad remains nameless and faceless in Australia, gets threats of tackle on Facebook

Stuart Broad was promised a special treatment from the fans. He’s getting it in full flow now, some of it in bad taste

The Stuart Broad saga in Australia is taking a new turn every other day it seems.

After Australian fans’ target no.1 was rendered nameless by the Courier Mail in Brisbane, the newspaper kept true to its promise of not calling Broad by his name and went as far as completely cutting out his image in the photographs of the match it published.

On the eve of the Test match, the Brisbane newspaper had called for a ‘Broad Ban’, saying that it will be mentioning the cricketer as ‘the 27-year-old English medium-pacer’. On Friday morning, the newspaper did report the happenings on the cricket field, but only after completely removing Broad from the pages:

It also printed a scorecard, but Broad was referred to as ‘T27YEMP’, short for ‘The 27-Year-Old English Medium-Pacer’

If Stuart Broad had laughed off the newspaper’s attention-seeking tactics, Shane Warne slammed the Australian media for adding fuel to the fire and warned that such incidents can only drive the player to give it back to his detractors, boosting Broad’s morale to answer everyone with performance on the field.

In conversation with Channel Nine, Warne said, “This ridiculous stuff with the papers is just childish. It’s just like being at primary school. The Australian papers – we’ve been the worst media, the worst print media, for a long time. They’re horrific, some of these guys, and I tell you what this is actually helping Broad, it’s actually backfiring on them straight away.

“You don’t really need that added motivation but as an individual deep down you think, ‘I’ll show you. You can sing your songs as much as you like but I’m just going to go about my business, I know what I’m doing’. It just inspired you a little bit more.”

Even if all this can be discarded as ‘childish’, some other incidents need urgent attention and need to be nipped in the bud.

A few new Facebook pages have been created which call for ‘likes’ and promise to tackle Stuart Broad on the Boxing Day! The 4th Test of the ongoing Ashes commences on the Boxing Day (26th December) at Melbourne Cricket Ground, and the owners of these pages have made a promise to tackle Broad at MCG if their pages reach a minimum number of ‘likes’.

Cricket Australia have taken a strong stance on this, and requested Facebook to take down these pages. An ESPNCricinfo report says that one of these pages had garnered 114,000 likes already, but it seems to have been removed after the CA’s appeal.

In press statement, CA said, “Cricket Australia takes this issue seriously and will not tolerate anti-social behaviour, or anyone encouraging it, at any cricket match. We’ve been in contact with Facebook to request the specific page be removed and will be passing on all available information to the relevant authorities.

“Anyone considering acting in this way is not welcome at the cricket and offenders will be subject to criminal charges and fines at all venues. Fines for entering the field of play vary from venue to venue but range in the thousands of dollars per offence.”

The England and Wales Cricket Board also criticised such threats on social media and deplored the use of violence in cricket.

“The ECB deplores any threats made towards any player and would urge Facebook to accede to Cricket Australia’s request to remove the offending and offensive page. There is no place in cricket for the incitement to violence of any form,” ECB said in an official statement.

If this was not enough, there was a pig involved too!