Stuart Broad reached the milestone of 500 wickets during the Test series against West Indies © AFP

There aren't many better redemption stories in cricket than that of Stuart Broad over the last month since cricket resumed post the pandemic break. Perhaps England's best Test bowler over the last two years, he's gone from being "rested" by the management in the first Test against the West Indies, a move which in his own words left him "angry, frustrated and gutted" to finishing as the Man of the Series.

Also, over the course of his 16 wickets in the two matches that he was selected in, he became only the seventh bowler in history to cross 500 Test wickets. But if you're 34, and you're left out on the pretext of rotation in the first match after a four-month long break, you're know you're staring at serious uncertainty with your future. Even if you happen to be England's second best pacer of all time.

"Were there thoughts of retirement going round my head? 100%. Because I was so down," Broad told The Mail on Sunday (August 2).

"It's not like I can move from Man United to LA Galaxy. If you are not playing for England, you are not playing for England. You always catastrophise when you are in a hotel room on your own. You are sitting alone in a room and it feels worse than it is. The cold facts were I had been left out of one game and I would probably play the next but my mind wasn't thinking like that.

"I can't think of many times I have been down like that. When I have been dropped before, I can go 'Fair enough, good decision, can't really argue with that'. This time, when Stokesy [Ben Stokes] told me I wasn't playing, I felt my body go into shakes. I could barely speak. It was a different situation."

The biosecure hotel rooms, without family, without visitors and without permission to break out of the bubble environment created thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic clearly didn't help.

"I have not really told anyone this but I was so down that week of the first Test. I was really low," he added. "I was stuck in that hotel. I couldn't go anywhere. It wasn't like I could go back to Mollie [girlfriend] and have a barbeque and chill out and reassess. I wasn't playing, I was staying in a single room. I didn't sleep for two days. I was nowhere. A different decision could definitely have been made with my emotions of how I was feeling.

"But because I have got such a good support network around me, my mum, dad, sister, Mollie, that helped me through. And Stokesy was brilliant. Stokesy knocked on my door on the Thursday night and stayed in the corridor to talk to me. He said: "This isn't about cricket, but how are you, mate?" That was very impressive for him to do."

But again, Broad is 34, he's already had a 13-year-long Test career and is a veteran of 140 matches, a feat most fast bowlers would give their bowling arm for, Surely he's one tick away from burning out?

Well, clearly not.

"I feel more hungry now at 34 than I did when I was 23. I feel so focused. It's nothing about proving people wrong. It is about proving me right. This is about me knowing I am bowling well, I am almost at the peak of my powers because I have learned so much over the last 13 years and I can put it together so let's go and perform when I get the opportunity.

"To be able to go on to the field with Jimmy [Anderson] again and us bowl so well as a partnership together again just dampened down a few more flames. In these last two games, people actually sat back and thought "Oh, yeah, Broad can bowl actually, he's worth having in the team" and "Oh, Broad and Anderson are worth watching together actually because they put batters under pressure". I grabbed everything I could from a negative and turned it into a ball of fire."

It'd be fair (although you never really know now) to assume that Broad would start against Pakistan at Old Trafford on Wednesday (August 12) and would ideally play all three Tests. How far does one look? An Indian winter in 2021? An Ashes Down Under towards the end of the year? 600 wickets? Overtaking Anderson on the wicket-takers list?

"When I had just got Tom Latham out for my 400th wicket in Auckland in 2018," he continues, "Richard Hadlee gave me a copy of his book and he wrote in it 'Now go and get 500' and I remember reading it and thinking 'Blimey, I can't even see that far ahead' but here we are and it has come round pretty quickly.

"I have never set particular targets but I have always been someone who tries to have short-term goals that make me better. In lockdown, I said I was going to work on a particular wrist position and get aerobically fit, so I used my hour a day to run. I came back and got my best fitness test result. That was a tick."

Broad now has now set his sights on 600, and wants to fully utilise that "burning desire" has has to keep winning matches for his country.

"Could I get 600? Absolutely I think I could. Jimmy was 35 and one month when he got 500. I was 34 and one month. Jimmy is now within touching distance of 600. So stats wise, absolutely. I'm actually more concerned with how to try to wrap a bubble around this rhythm and momentum I have got as a cricketer right now.

"I feel a burning desire to keep winning Test matches, keep getting that feeling and hopefully I will burn that out. Because I think it's a dangerous thing as a sportsperson to leave the sport you love with that burning desire still there. That's when things can go the wrong way. For now, though, let's keep that fire burning."