Stuart Christopher John Broad, (born 24 June 1986) is an English cricketer who plays Test cricket for the England cricket team and a former One Day and Twenty 20 International captain. A right-arm seam bowler and left-handed batsman, Broad began his professional career at Leicestershire; in 2008 he transferred to Nottinghamshire, the county of his birth and the team for which his father played. In August 2006 he was voted the Cricket Writers' Club Young Cricketer of the Year. In the fourth Test of the 2015 Ashes series Broad took career-best figures of 8–15 in the Australian first innings as they were dismissed for just 60. This performance was named as Wisden's Men's Test spell of the decade. Broad was awarded the Man of the Match in the fifth Test of the 2009 Ashes series at the Oval, after figures of 5/37 in the afternoon session of the second day. On 30 July 2011, at the Nottingham Test match against India, he achieved a Test match hat-trick in the process gaining his then best Test figures of 6–46. As a batsman, he holds the second-highest ever Test score made by a number 9, having scored 169 against Pakistan in August 2010. At the start of the summer in 2012 Broad, returning from injury, produced figures of 7 for 72 in a match haul of 11 wickets against the West Indies. He is England's second highest wicket taker in Test cricket. During the 2020 series against the West Indies, Broad became the seventh bowler to take 500 wickets in Test cricket, after dismissing Kraigg Brathwaite. Broad was the fourth fast bowler, and second bowler for England to reach the milestone after James Anderson, who achieved it against the same batsman. In December 2021, in the second match of the 2021–22 Ashes series, Broad played in his 150th Test match. Early life Broad was born 12 weeks prematurely and his life was saved by a doctor called John, after whom he was (middle) named when he survived. Broad originally started his cricketing career as an opening batsman, following in the footsteps of his father, the former England opener and current ICC match referee Chris Broad. It was not until he was 17 and had a growth spurt that he started to consider being a fast bowler. Broad had been associated with Leicestershire since he was 8 years old, having represented them at