Despite being left out of England’s ODI squad for the upcoming series against Sri Lanka, Stuart Broad has no plans of giving up on ODIs, reports ESPN Cricinfo. The 29-year-old has played just two ODIs since the 2015 World Cup but he still wants to reclaim his place in the side in time for the 2017 Champions Trophy.
Broad was also keen to stress that he needed to find an USP to succeed in ODIs. “I almost need a bit of a unique selling point in one-day cricket," he said.
"I can't just be a regulation line-and-length bowler, I have to be something a bit different and whether that’s me going round the wicket and looking to improve my skills in that way, making the batsman think: 'What's he doing here?' Not just to shut down one side but maybe changing the angle, maybe my legcutter from round the wicket would be hard to slog to the leg side. This is just me thinking aloud. There might be something I can find that batsmen will struggle with.”
Speaking about his omission from the squad to face Sri Lanka, Broad said: “It’s tricky because I haven’t played any white-ball cricket. I think I saw a quote saying this squad had been picked on merit and I can't argue with that at all because it's not as if I've gone out there and taken a certain amount of white-ball wickets. I'm going to have to find a way to do that.
With England not playing a Test for six months after the series against India, Broad is looking to reclaim his spot by playing List-A games instead of playing in the BBL, IPL or the Pakistan Super League.
"I'm going to look at scheduling, whether it's home or abroad, to try to play some white-ball cricket and there might be a decent opportunity after Christmas this year because there's not a lot of Test cricket then until I think July. The only way I'll get back is by playing white-ball cricket and that's the only way my skills will improve, too.”
Age not an issue for Broad
As one of the youngest of England’s Test regulars, Broad doesn’t think age is an issue for him.
"I'm still only 29 but because I've played a lot of my cricket with Belly and Jimmy who are a bit older I sort of get put in that category," he said. "A lot of people have played at World Cups at 32 and that's certainly not an old age for a cricketer so I've got huge goals to be a part of that and have to pick some stuff to get involved in.”
Speaking about whether playing just the longest format has helped him, Broad said: "I don't want to say not playing any white-ball cricket has helped my red-ball form because it weakens my argument but certainly it has given me time to improve on my red-ball performances and I did have improvements to make.
"Now I need to develop my white-ball bowling as part of that improvement. For instance, I haven't bowled round the wicket to left-handers with a white ball. I've had such success like that with the red ball that it might be something I have to look at.
"I almost need to sit down with a pen and paper and say: 'Right I want to play here, and this is the type of delivery I need to work at' and hopefully we'll be sat here next year and I'll have some stats behind me. Then I can go to the selectors and say: 'You told me you were picking the team on merit. Well there you go.'”
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