London
It’s no great industry secret to reveal that if a player is dropped and wants to get their side of the story across, their agent tends to do their bidding.
Whatever the sport, the two key elements are the information and the distance of said information. For instance, the greater the detail, the more obvious it came from a close source. Maybe even the player themselves. An agent or confidant offers the perfect buffer.
But when you are someone of great stature like, say, Stuart Broad, you do not need to pass off your dismay to those in the shadows. When you are as seasoned as he is – and that’s not just simply the 138 Test caps across 13 years – you know how to take charge of a narrative.
Before the start of day three, Broad gave an interview with Sky in their diary-room style booth that might rank as one of the great rejection speeches. “I’ve been frustrated, angry, gutted – because it’s quite a hard decision to understand.”
Here were 485 Test wickets, at a loss explain why he was sat in training kit blue while those in white were about to take to the field. His words resonated with all: cricket fans, other cricketers, and even the man who dropped him, Ben Stokes, who commended an “absolutely brilliant” interview while he, as stand-in captain, surveyed the damage of a four-wicket defeat to the West Indies in the opening Test.—AFP
