Having replaced India as the No 1 Test side in the world after going up 3-0 in the four-match rubber, England pacer Stuart Broad said his team will strive to inflict complete a 4-0 whitewash on M.S. Dhoni’s men. “There are a lot of challenges ahead of us, but the immediate one is to win this series 4-0. That’s what we will be striving for from Thursday,” said Broad.
He credited the Edgbaston win to a perfect team work but added his team had no right to win at the Trent Bridge. “Edgbaston was close to the perfect team performance. And in many ways we had no right to win at Trent Bridge after the first two days but India gave us a sniff and we piled in through the open door,” the speedster said. Broad attributed their climb to the top of Test rankings to long years of hard work and reiterated that a lot of credit must go to the support staff and Test captain Andrew Strauss. “It seemed so far away, the permutations so difficult to achieve. Now here we are, little more than two-and-a-half years later, and we are on top of the world,” Broad wrote in his column in the ‘Daily Mail’ “A huge amount of credit for this has to go to Flower and Strauss. It is the players who step on the field and have to be judged but the amount of preparation and hard work that has gone into this achievement is phenomenal,” he added.
Broad revealed the great thing about their bowling unit was that they take pleasure in each other’s successes. “What odds would you have got on India failing to reach 300 in six innings in the first three Tests with their array of batting superstars? The great thing about our bowling unit is that we genuinely take as much pleasure in each other’s successes as our own.
“Some people say they are disappointed that India haven’t made more of a fight of this series. Well, perhaps we haven’t allowed them to,” the 25-year-old insisted. Broad, who was close to being dropped before the first Test, said the management and selectors are very good at showing faith in those they believe can do the job.