Verity and Broad. In their less familiar roles.
by Arunabha Sengupta
The second morning of the Manchester Test.
Stuart Broad skipped down the wicket, got to the pitch of the ball, and drove the rather innocuous off-break of Roston Chase to deep cover. It resulted in a couple.
After two years of unadulterated nonsense with the bat, since the start of this year, Broad seems to have suddenly remembered the basics of runmaking. This was his first half-century since the Boxing Day Test at MCG, 2017. And with this particular brace he moved to 60.
And two balls later, he cracked Chase to sweeper cover yet again to move to 61.
Broad fell in the following Chase over, slog sweeping him to Blackwood on the deep mid-wicket fence. His innings amounted to 62.
However, when he had reached 61, he had, almost unnoticed, eclipsed a long-standing batting record.
No one has scored more at Old Trafford in a Test match while batting at No 10 or lower. The previous record had been held for 86 years by Hedley Verity.
1934 had till then been a summer in which the Yorkshire left-arm spinner could do no wrong.
At Lord’s he had taken 15 wickets, 14 of them in a day, Don Bradman in both innings, as England had won by an innings. Even David Suchet as Hercule Poirot had been eloquent about the feat in the television adaptation of Four and Twenty Blackbirds.
At Old Trafford Verity had come in with the score reading a formidable 510 for 8 and hit an unbeaten 60. In the process he had added a rollicking 95 with Gubby Allen.
He had gone on to claim 4 for 78 when Australia had batted.
Verity was a good enough bat to be tried as an opener in a Test during the 1936-37 Ashes. He could be a gritty customer with a sound technique, and also a stylish stroke maker when the mood took him. At his best, he could look like an out of form Herbert Sutcliffe, which is indeed saying a lot.
Verity averaged almost 21 with the bat in his 40 Tests and scored three half-centuries. The Manchester innings of 1934 had been his second fifty.
He loved batting at Old Trafford, scoring 142 runs there in five Tests, dismissed only once, thereby averaging 142 in the ground. Two years later, he hit 66 not out at the venue from No 9, adding 138 with RWV Robins against a strong attack including Mohammad Nissar and Amar Singh.
However, the 60 not out of 1934 stood as the record score by a No 10 (as also No 10 and No 11 combined) at the ground till it was broken on this day by Stuart Broad.
It is unusual to find Broad and Verity in the news about batting records. One of those curious statistics.