End of Broad and Anderson made sadder by them being last of their kind

There was a lovely and rather poignant moment during Mollie King’s Instagram Live feed on Sunday morning. The radio presenter and former pop star was filming a video from her house, chatting gaily away about wellness and vitamin supplements, when all of a sudden her fiance pops up in the comments, apologising for the noise he’s making in the next room.

“That must be him calling the front door,” Mollie laughs. “Stuart? I’ve shut the door so he don’t distract me. He’s sat outside. Come in, babe!” And then, right on cue, in walks Instagram husband: Stuart Broad, all 6ft 6in and 537 Test wickets of him, smiling sheepishly in an MCC training top. Another woman on the call, an Australian nutritionist, remembers that Broad has just been playing in the Ashes, and asks him when he’ll next be back.

“I’m not sure,” Broad replies, and for an instant his gaze sinks, and you realise that very few of the people tuning in will have the faintest idea of his turmoil, an interior chaos that may be passing through the stages of shock and denial and anger but is still very recognisably a form of grief. After a little good-natured banter, Broad leaves and the conversation turns to Mollie’s blossoming media career.

Of course, Broad has been carefully nurturing a little media empire of his own: punditry, podcasts, newspaper columns. But for all the careful strategising and polished media sheen, there has always been a rawness there too: an untamed sporting animal whose wildest dreams still involve nipping one back off the seam and clattering off-stump. The world of television studios and celebrity magazine spreads and Instagram Lives will open its arms when the time is right. But it is not the thing he wants right now.

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