Nottingham, July 30: Stuart Broad had a glorious day of Test cricket, running through the Indian middle-order claiming five of the six wickets that fell in a cluster on Day 2. The local player finished with a six-wicket haul in the innings, including a hattrick, the first ever at Trent Bridge.

At the end of the day, a very pleased Broad spoke to the media about his inspired spell that stopped India’s flow of runs and restricted the visitors to a 67-run lead.

Excerpts:

On his performance in front of the home crowd

The support at Trent Bridge was very good today; the atmosphere was bouncing towards the end. It was a tough day for bowlers. The heavy roller [had] taken effect so it was quite slow this morning. The way India batted they didn’t really give us a chance. Yuvraj [Singh] and [Rahul] Dravid took the game away from us before the new ball came. But we knew that when the new ball came we wanted a big lift in our team’s atmosphere which [also] got the crowd going a bit. We knew that the wickets could fall in quick succession and fortunately they did.

On whether bowling to Yuvraj Singh gets the best out of him

He is obviously a world class player. I think we bowled particularly well today at him actually. We dropped him when he was on four [runs] which is disappointing and hurt a little bit. I thought the way Jimmy [James] Anderson bowled in particular, pitching the ball on middle and leg [stump], going across [Yuvraj], sort of past his chest, [it] was a lot likely he [would] get out quite often so that was a really good plan to [get] him and something we would look at in the future.

On the inevitable comparison to Andrew Flintoff

The comparison was really around since I was a youngster. Obviously, a fantastic name in English cricket so it’s always nice to have that sort of thing but as I said, it was a good all-round performance from the team today. I thought we handled the pressure throughout the day and were fortunate to pick up those six wickets in quick succession.

On how the wicket was likely to behave on Day 3

Yeah, there is still enough there. We saw the ball do something all day; today might not have been as quick as yesterday but I think we can learn a lot from the way India’s top-order played as well. They left really well, they made the bowlers come to them and when the bad ball came, [they] put it away so it’s up to us to make sure we build a good lead tomorrow. I think bowling last on this wicket will be a good time to bowl.