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The big highlight of the England v Ireland Test was lost amid a deluge of wickets. When Ireland were 6-0 in their second innings, Stuart Broad bowled Will Porterfield’s pocket out.
Broad bowled, squared Porterfield up and the ball deflected to slip. The England players appealed for a catch, but it wasn’t given and they didn’t review it.
The players swiftly got over the disappointment and reverted to acting all overly-serious and businesslike. Broad stalked back to his mark, Jason Roy went back to his fielding position and Joe Root rubbed the ball against his thigh like he was covertly succumbing to the temptation to scratch a batch of mosquito bites.
This was sad because in focusing on the non-dismissal, they all totally overlooked a far greater feat, which was that Stuart Broad had just bowled Will Porterfield’s pocket out.
The pocket was in. And then, following Broad’s intervention, it was out.
That is a magnificent feat.
In truth, the dismissal was a prime example of the gulf in class between the two sides. The pocket was always a walking wicket, because viewing the footage again, it never quite seemed wholly ‘in’.
Display that kind of vulnerability to a bowler of Broad’s quality and you’re bound to pay the price.
The then, current and indeed future Ireland captain should have weighed his trouser pocket down with a bit of dirt. Might have been a closer match too…
Super Bail Glue would have blasted out of an Australian’s sky rocket.
That pocket should not be batting higher than 6 in the batting line-up.
You’d never see that sort of out from a genuine top pocket.
Ive just seen that this piece is linked with another piece “Stuart Broad snatches the all-rounder baton off Andrew Flintoff”.
Im hoping KC is predicting good things from Broady in the coming Ashes series but thinking that its probably an old piece which makes me sad.
Don’t be sad, go and read the comments, all the comments!!!
Doing so would show that Ged used to present his moniker as’GED’, as if it were an acronym, perhaps as part of a tie-in with the General Educational Development certificate in the USA.
Now he has revered to more standard capitalisation, we can only imagine that the sponsorship deal has expired, but Ged has been forced to repurpose the name, much in the manner of Welsh football team The New Saints (formerly Total Network Solutions) when their sponsor were bought out by BT.
Now that is aausam!
I wonder if that sibling reunion ever occurred?
Shock twist – since our mystery commentator is “very……like” Stuart Broad, indeed the sibling resemblance may be most striking, what makes you think the “Stuart Broad” who bowled England to success against Ireland is the same Stuart Broad who was the subject of that article, rather than the long-lost brother and superfan who commented underneath it? The periodic replacement of Stuart Broads might explain their perpetual youth.
Bail-out, are you suggesting some sort of ‘Paul is Dead‘-style conspiracy is the reason Broad seems to no longer bat as well as he used to, as opposed to the more widely-held theory that (to quote this very website) “he top-edged a Varun Aaron bouncer into his own face and everything changed”?
Yes, the self-same thought had crossed my mind. The evidence clearly points only one way. Though I wouldn’t go so far as to venture “Broad is dead”, I’m sure he’s just resting. Why not let his distant sibling do some of the work for once? I think Joe Rooooot would be well-advised to get his little brother on the job for a bit, he’s clearly in need of a break at the moment.
I hope it’s just his pocket.
William Porterfield.