Broad urges England to observe speed limit in Lord's race for pace

Before maturing Darren Gough was obsessed with bowling fast. Every day the former England paceman wanted to bowl the fastest ball.

In 1998, when England played South Africa, an advertising board with a digital box in it appeared at the side of the pitch, signifying the speed of the ball just bowled. Its presence dominated Gough's thoughts and there were times when he did not care if the ball he had just bowled had been hit for four.

Gough's fixation produced several interesting scenes. On a couple of occasions a team-mate would be chasing the ball to the cover boundary but Gough would be looking at deep square leg, waiting for a figure to flash up on the digital box. If 90mph appeared he would punch the air, often at the same time as the umpire was signalling four.

The vision did not help the already fragile mental state of David Lloyd, the then England coach, who tried to get the machines switched off to avoid his spearhead being distracted. He failed.

A fast bowler's ego means that he wants to be the speediest about but England's pacemen have been told not to try to compete with their South African counterparts in the first Test at Lord's. It is sound advice. South Africa, no matter how hard James Anderson, Ryan Sidebottom and Stuart Broad try, will have the edge on the pace front. Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and Makhaya Ntini are all capable of hitting 90mph; Broad was England's fastest bowler in the recent one-day series against New Zealand, touching the figure on a couple of occasions.

"The key for us is not to try to match the pace and bounce of the South Africans," admitted Broad. "We need to stick to the things that we have done well in the past four or five Test matches against New Zealand. We've got two world-class swing bowlers with the new ball up front and we just need to stick to our game plans. We do not need to be someone we are not. We all bowl above 85mph, which is useful, but we look to do things with the ball.

"We have sat down as a unit and discussed the possibility of trying to bowl too fast. We took 40 New Zealand wickets in the last two Tests and we do not need to move too far away from what we did there. We have had bowlers getting five fors and seven fors, so we don't need to change our game plans. Obviously we need to adapt to different surfaces and different players but we are not going to charge in and try to bowl at 95mph because that would send our techniques and radars awry. We are very happy where our bowling unit is at the moment and if we stick to our game plans we will give them something to worry about.

"We will be aggressive. We have not been shy of a bouncer in the last few Tests. But it is not the speed of the bouncer that always counts, it is the positioning of it. It will be something we use here but we use it against every side in the world."

England's bowlers are fully aware that high-quality fast bowling is not solely about banging the ball in half-way down the pitch and trying to hit batsmen on the head. The short ball is a delivery that should be used sparingly, in order to get the batsman's weight on the back foot. When this is achieved it increases the possibility of him being late when playing forward, a technical fault that increases the chances of him edging or missing a full ball. According to Graham Gooch, the former England opener, it was just such tactics that made Malcolm Marshall, the deceased West Indian fast bowler, the best and most dangerous in the world.

Facing fast bowling takes total concentration but the mind of Andrew Strauss, England's opening batsman, will not just be focused on South Africa's fast bowlers during the first Test – in the next week his wife Ruth is due to give birth to their second child.

The modern trend is for fathers to be present at such events. Indeed, Strauss flew home from England's tour of Pakistan in November 2005, missing a Test, to attend the birth of his son, Sam. Michael Vaughan left the field to make a mad dash down the M1 from Leeds to Sheffield during a Test against the West Indies in 2004 to be present at the birth of his first child and Strauss finds himself in a similar predicament.

"The doctor has told us it is due in the next week but I will not be leaving the field if I am on it," said Strauss. "If I am not batting I may nip off but if I am on the field I will be concentrating on cricket. If I am going to play I owe it to my team-mates to be fully switched on. My wife completely understands and hopefully it will work out that she gives birth after the close of play, or at the end of the game."

* Sri Lanka will replace Zimbabwe as England's first opponents of next summer, it was announced yesterday. Sri Lanka will face England in two Tests in May, at Lord's and the Riverside, as the home side build up for the Ashes later in the summer.

Birth pangs: The bedside battle

England's Andrew Strauss has said he will not leave the first Test to attend the birth of his son if he is on the field. Here are a selection of other sportsmen who have face a birth dilemma:

* In 1989 Martin Allen was fined two weeks' wages by the QPR manager Trevor Francis for missing a match to attend the birth of his son.

* Xabi Alonso's request to join the Liverpool squad late before a game against Milan to be at the birth of his first child was denied by manager Rafa Benitez, who then left him out of the squad.

* The new England rugby union manager Martin Johnson missed the team's recent tour to New Zealand to be at the birth of his second child.

* Chelsea 'keeper Petr Cech chose to play against Everton in the Carling Cup semi-final last year, missing the arrival of his daughter.

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