England pacer Stuart Broad said that England have a “love affair” with the Ashes series. England will play against Australia in the reputed Ashes series starting from June 16.
“You can’t take the emphasis off the Ashes because it’s our biggest series. You only have to have been driving through service stations in the last year and it’s ‘come on guys, beat Australia”—our country has a love affair with Ashes cricket, but as an organisation, we had to get our mindset away from personnel losing their jobs if results didn’t go the way you want them to,” Broad said.
With five first-innings wickets in England’s ten-wicket victory over Ireland at Lord’s last week, Broad showed his lasting abilities as a strike bowler. He is aware that there is no certainty that he has done enough to be in the starting lineup for the first game of the series next week, especially with James Anderson, Ollie Robinson, and Mark Wood all in the race for recalls at Edgbaston.
“I think we have lived in a really healthy way in the last 12 months,” he added. “The Ashes was only mentioned for the first time in the post-match debrief against Ireland, and it was ‘it doesn’t matter what the results are as long as we stick to how we play’.