sport news JOFRA ARCHER: Australian abuse will spur our boys on and Stuart Broad is going ...

sport news JOFRA ARCHER: Australian abuse will spur our boys on and Stuart Broad is going ...
sport news JOFRA ARCHER: Australian abuse will spur our boys on and Stuart Broad is going ...

I would give so much to be a part of this Ashes — it would be a totally different experience from any other Test series I’ve played in.

Australia offers different conditions. You play with an unfamiliar ball and at a contrast of venues in front of vocal crowds.

Over here when you go to the ground on the morning of a match, everyone is talking to you, wishing you well, but in Australia that encouragement is replaced by hostility and people are getting into you from the moment you step off the team bus.

Stuart Broad and his team-mates will be given a lot of abuse by the Australian fans

Stuart Broad and his team-mates will be given a lot of abuse by the Australian fans 

It’s the kind of setting that a fierce competitor like Stuart Broad has come to thrive in and that’s what I expect him to do in this upcoming series. He tends to get lots of abuse over there — but that only spurs him on.

Broad is a typical England player, one of the guys who really feeds off the England-Australia rivalry and always wants to beat the old enemy because it’s in his blood.

The Ashes is slightly different for me. Yes, I loved the atmosphere, but it is the toughness of the cricket that I have always fed off. It’s the game and the intensity of it that has my full attention, not the history around it.

Growing up in Barbados, I’ve never got up in the morning and thought: ‘It’s the Ashes, I can’t wait to go get stuck into those Aussies.’ It’s never been like that. Not that I’m anything less than desperate to beat them.

Broad tends to get lots of abuse over there — but that only spurs the fast bowler on

Broad tends to get lots of abuse over there — but that only spurs the fast bowler on

Naturally, it is frustrating for me to be ruled out through injury but there is no doubt in my mind that we have world-class players in this England dressing room and man for man I think we have a better team than Australia. Now is the time for us to prove it.

Cast your minds back to the 2019 Ashes and consider how different things could be now as we look ahead to the first Test in Brisbane tonight.

The Lord’s Test was defining. But for so much of it being washed out, we would have won and that would have altered the course of that series. Yes, we came back from 1-0 down and drew 2-2 in the end but if that second game had ended in a positive result, who knows how things would’ve gone?

And if we were heading into this series holding the Ashes, it would alter the mentality. As it is, I don’t expect England to feel their way into things at the Gabba. There is nothing to lose. We don’t have the urn and so if we don’t come back with it, we’ve lost nothing.

With that in mind, I would throw caution to the wind from the start and show that we are in Australia because we mean

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