Broad: 'I try to enjoy my cricket – to play as if it were a hobby'

A couple of summers ago, when people first began to take serious notice of the gangling, boyish 19-year-old with the shock of blond hair who was beginning to menace even the best batsmen exposed to his bowling, somehow everyone knew they were looking at a future England Test player, and not just because his dad happened to have been one.

If Stuart Broad ever worried about being in the shadow of his father, Chris, he need not have. Where the left-handed opening batsman was 26 and with the experience of 100 first-class matches behind him before England considered him ready, his son has completed that journey in one third of the time.

It has been an extraordinary transition, the speed of which has taken not only him by surprise. It has been a bit of a shock to Nottinghamshire, too. Although Broad had already played in 10 one-day internationals by the time it was announced, last August, that he would be leaving Leicestershire for Trent Bridge at the end of the season, his new employers still thought he would be spearheading their attack for at least a year, perhaps two.

"I think Peter Moores [the England coach] wants him to play more county cricket and develop his game," the Nottinghamshire director of cricket, Mick Newell, said at the time. "He is a young lad still with a lot to learn."

Now, having looked on as Broad made his Test debut in Sri Lanka last December and then, along with James Anderson, helped turn around the series in New Zealand in March after Steve Harmison and Matthew Hoggard were dropped, Nottinghamshire wonder whether they will see much of him at all beyond next month.

The trouble is that while Broad may have much to learn – he is not 22 until June – he is devouring his lessons with a considerable appetite under the guidance of the England bowling coach, Ottis Gibson, and with every attainment level reached he wants to move to the next as quickly as possible. "[Playing for England] has come a lot quicker than I could ever have hoped for and to be playing international cricket at 21 is a dream," Broad said. "You can't buy experience and to have three Tests and 30-odd one-dayers behind me already is fantastic. But there is no point in doing that and then stopping. I need to try to stay in this side for the next 10 to 12 years so it is important that I keep improving and kicking on."

Tall – he is 6ft 7in – and pacy, Broad has an uncomplicated, rhythmical action that is relatively easy to maintain but if there is another quality that has enabled him to progress by such enormous strides so rapidly – from first-class debut to Test debut in two-and-a-half years – it is that he appears to be nerveless, quite unfazed by whatever challenge is set before him.

"It has all happened so quickly I've not had time to think about things, really," he said. "But maybe that has helped. I was very excited when I was told I was making my Test debut but on the day I was not really nervous. Having 20 one-dayers behind me was a massive advantage, because I'd played on the international stage in front of big crowds against the same sorts of players. I didn't particularly doubt anything or wonder what it would it be like.

"For my first one-dayer I was probably slightly nervous, but I had played in Twenty20 finals day two weeks before at Trent Bridge and had experienced a crowd and the pressure of TV. And I had good people around me to say how it is going to be so nothing was a massive shock. I just had to get myself in my bubble and run in and bowl. Whether I'm playing league cricket on a Saturday or Test cricket with England, it does not change the way I bowl or the way I feel."

He clearly has an effective self-doubt filter, too, although that observation should not be taken as implying arrogance. Last September, in the ICC World Twenty20 in Durban, he was hit for six sixes in the same over by India's Yuvraj Singh, yet moved on from an experience that might have left another bowler a quivering wreck as if it were a minor wobble.

"Honestly, it did not really affect me," he said. "I knew that one over did not make me a bad bowler and I've never been one to look back on things and reflect too much.

"In the immediate aftermath I had a bit of a giggle. Small boundaries, the batsmen with an absolute licence to slog – I bowled a poor over and it went the distance. It's going to happen more to bowlers as more Twenty20 cricket comes in.

"But I went to Sri Lanka and took 11 wickets at 20s [in the one-day series] and that proved to me that it had not changed me as a bowler. It will always be with me, but it won't prey on my mind. My record in Twenty20 is actually quite good, in spite of that."

He credits his mother and father with helping him to keep a calm head, which might surprise anyone who remembers his father refusing to leave the crease after being given out in the Faisalabad Test on England's 1987-88 tour of Pakistan, then knocking his middle stump out of the ground after his first-innings dismissal in the Bicentenary Test in Sydney two months later.

The old man, now an ICC match referee, has clearly mellowed somewhat, while Stuart's mother, who brought him up in Leicestershire after the couple split up, remains a strong influence on him.

"Off the field I prefer to stay under the radar, anyway, but I know if I were ever getting out of line my mum would tell me straight away," Stuart said. "On the field, they have both encouraged me to enjoy my cricket, at whatever level I've played at, so I try to play the game as if it were a hobby."

Not that he is any less competitive for it. When he makes his Championship debut for Nottinghamshire against Yorkshire at Headingley today he could find himself in a potential bowl-off for a first Test place with Hoggard, who will be eager to press his claim for a recall by adding to the eight wickets he took against Hampshire last week.

If Broad has an edge over his more experienced rival, it is with a bat in his hand. Where Hoggard is a genuine tail-ender, Broad has inherited a good chunk of his father's primary ability, so much in fact that he was 17 before he convinced Leicestershire, who thought they knew where his talents lay, that he was more than a batsman who could bowl a bit.

Now he wants to convince England he is unmistakably a bowler who can bat, by establishing himself as an all-rounder.

"By getting 40-odd in the first innings in Napier, in the third Test in New Zealand, when we were struggling slightly, I proved to myself that I can bat at that level," he said. "Now it is a matter of getting experience and the confidence. There is time to work on everything in training – batting, bowling and fielding – so I don't feel I have to devote my entire attention to bowling."

He is already unlikely to bat lower than No 8. Any higher and he may find himself up against Andrew Flintoff, although even a challenge of that magnitude is unlikely to curb Broad's ambition.

Broad Rush: Nottinghamshire seamer's race to England honours

Born in Nottingham 24 June 1986. Son of England Test player Chris.

June 2004: Debut for Leicestershire second XI, aged 17.

April 2005: First-class debut, Leicestershire v Durham UCCE, Leicester.

June 2005: Championship debut v Somerset.

July 2005: Debut for England Under-19s v Sri Lanka, Worcester.

April 2006: Five wickets in a Championship innings for the first time, against Surrey.

July 2006

Debut for England A v Pakistan.

August 2006: Wins Twenty20 Cup with Leicestershire. England Twenty20 debut v Pakistan, Bristol. Takes two wickets in his four overs, which go for 35 runs.

August 2006: England ODI debut v Pakistan, Cardiff. Takes one wicket in three overs before match washed out.

February 2007: Joins England A tour to Bangladesh.

April 2007: England World Cup debut v West Indies, Bridgetown.

August 2007: Agrees to join Nottinghamshire for 2008 season.

September 2007: Smashed for six sixes in an over during World Twenty20 competition in Durban by Indian batsman Yuvraj Singh.

December 2007: Test debut v Sri Lanka, Colombo. Takes 1 for 95 in only Sri Lanka innings and makes two runs in only innings.

Tests 3; Batting: Runs 92 Highest score 42 Average 23

Bowling: Wickets 9 Best bowling 3 for 54 Average 38.33

ODIs 26 Batting: Runs 208 Highest score 45* Average 29.71 Bowling: Wickets 38 Best bowling 4 for 51 Average 29.34.

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