Stuart Broad has taken on the former Australia players who have criticised Ollie Robinson for sledging.

Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting and Justin Langer have all slammed Robinson.

Writing in his new column for Daily Mail, Broad said he was surprised with the way former Australia cricketers have attacked Ollie Robinson, following his send-off to Usman Khawaja.

“A lot more has been made of words on the field between Ollie Robinson and Usman Khawaja than ought to have been, to be honest,” wrote Broad.

“Ultimately, the ICC had no problem with Ollie’s reaction to dismissing Khawaja in the first innings and I didn’t like Matthew Hayden’s disparaging comments about him,” he said.

“Ollie averages 21 with the ball in Test cricket over a decent amount of time and bowls in a very similar way to Glenn McGrath. “Yes, there was a bit of emotion on the field, but off it we are obviously seeing the Australian guys in the pavilion corridors all the time, eating lunch in the same room and we enjoyed a nice-natured week.

“Now a couple of expletives the other way and everyone is piling in. Where are we going with this?”

Training his gun on Ponting, Broad said that the former Australia captain was himself a big “sledger.”

“Ricky Ponting had a bit of a nibble because Robbo brought his name into things during a press conference, but not because Ricky was a huge sledger.

“Ollie had a bit of a mind blank, Ricky Ponting was the most famous ex-Aussie cricketer he could think of, and that Australia team he played in was hardly full of shrinking violets, so the hoo-ha that was created surprised us.

“I’m sure it’ll die down pretty quickly, though, because with the teams getting on so well it’s a little bit of an irrelevance,” he said.

Aggression unlimited

The defeat in the opening Ashes Test notwithstanding, James Anderson has warned Australia that England will be ready with their “positive” and “aggressive” cricket for the second Test at Lord’s.

“I think we’ll go more positive, more aggressive, more entertaining,” Anderson said at the London Stadium, where he threw out the ceremonial first pitch in the baseball game between the Chicago Cubs and St Louis Cardinals.

“We want to try and make sure people go home happy as they did each day at Edgbaston.

“Just because we’re 1-0 down I don’t think we’ll try anything different. I think we showed enough last week to show we can win the next four if we keep playing like that and iron a few things out. We’ll go exactly the same.”

That essentially means England will stick to their “Bazball” approach even though some of their attacking moves backfired in the opening Test at Edgbaston.

On a different issue, Anderson felt that cricket and baseball share some common traits and there are things that cricketers can pick from baseball.

“I think you see the way cricket has developed, the way guys try to hit the ball, I think they take a lot from the guys here,” he said.

“I’ve always watched the fielding and thought it was something we could do better. The speed they get to the ball, the speed they release the ball... I know it’s a different ball but I think it’s something we could learn from,” he said.