The editor of Brisbane newspaper Courier Mail, which has led a special crusade against England bowler Stuart Broad since the first day of the Ashes opener at the Gabba, has revealed his reasons behind the paper's battle with the pace bowler.
The paper has spent the first Ashes Test referring to Broad only as a '27-year-old medium-pace bowler'.
According to The Guardian, editor Christopher Dore said that Broad earned the role of Ashes villain partly by being a 'wickedly good Test cricketer with just a hint of Australian mongrel' in him but mainly by acting with 'complete contempt' for the spirit of the game on that 'dark day in July' at Trent Bridge.
Dore further said that they were angered at the fact that Broad stood sporting a 'docile look of bemusement' despite 'actually' middling the ball to first slip, which is an entire foreign concept in the debate of walking, adding that the most 'galling' aspect of his 'dastardly' deception was that he got away with it and changed the course of the series.
According to Dore, Broad's actions set the tone for an English summer of outrageous misfortune for the hapless Australians, adding that following Test legend Allan Border's advice that going after Broad would be a bad idea as he thrives on attention, they decided to give him the 'silent treatment' thereby giving birth to the 'Broad ban'.
Dore said the paper felt that the treatment was an even a graver insult to Broad than turning him into an asterisk and refusing to publish his image, adding that they went harder after Broad's five-wicket haul on the first day by calling him the 'Phantom Menace' and referring to him in reports as 27YEMP.
