Never mind the flowing locks and baby blue eyes, Stuart Broad is 22 going on 50. He does not like my silly polar bear joke, prefers Test cricket to the excitement of Twenty20 and his aim in life is to bowl with monotonous consistency.

When he saw Kevin Pietersen shake the game with his switch-hit stroke in the first one-day international against New Zealand last month, Broad did not whoop or give the nearest team-mate a high five. “I was a bit shocked,” he said. “I was drinking my cup of tea and spat it out. We were watching live and then all ran into the dressing-room to watch it on the telly because we were not actually sure we'd just seen that. You could see the shock on the bowler's face. To turn all the way round is amazing.”

Broad would be less amused if Pietersen repeats the shot in a Test match, saying: “It would be interesting if we were 60 for five or something.”

His friends tell him “all the time” that Test cricket is boring. “I've always been a traditionalist,” Broad said. Perhaps this is because he was born into a family that had established its cricketing credentials. Chris, his father, is a former England opening batsman. His best piece of advice has been, according to Stuart, that he should never lose his passion for the game. “Every day you've got to treat it like it could be your last as that means you'll put in absolutely everything,” Stuart said.

Much is made of the father-son relationship but Stuart lived with his mother, Carol, after his parents separated when he was 4. “To be fair, my mum's been the one who watched most of my cricket when I was younger,” Broad said. “She is the one who carted me around the country. She'd be sat there in a deckchair all day watching and then drive me home. So she's the one who has always watched my development.”

The pace of his development has been impressive. “It's happened pretty quickly. I've only played 40 one-day games and I've played 30 for England. I've only played ten without the Three Lions on. Which sounds a bit odd, but the exciting thing for me is I've played 30 one-dayers and six Tests, so by the time I'm 27, 28, I'll have - if I keep going - a wealth of experience and be on the way to being a good bowler. I'll have played in most scenarios and won't get fazed by most things.”

Broad claims that he is adept at putting bad moments behind him. They probably will not come much worse than the over he bowled to Yuvraj Singh at the World Twenty20 last September when the India batsman hit him for six sixes. “My dad tells me the quicker you move on from the bad days, the quicker you'll develop as a player,” he said.

He has now been chosen to provide “brilliant answers” to promote a new text service. Is he brilliant? “I wouldn't say I was brilliant at school academically,” he said. “I came out with three Bs at A level, which was punching above my weight slightly.”

Broad played regional hockey until he was 18. “I thoroughly enjoyed my hockey,” he said. “But I was running out for a short corner and got one in the kneecap and that was me done in that sport; it was a bit risky.”

He does not do risky these days. His role model is Glenn McGrath, the former Australia bowler and king of the solid, quirk-free delivery.

“McGrath has always been my hero,” Broad said. “I love the way he went about his life. He trained hard and was fantastic to watch and had a classy manner. I'm quite lucky in that I've got a similar body shape. I'm the same height as him [6ft 5in] and quite slim.”

Broad hopes that young players are not entering the game thinking only of Twenty20, with the hope of making a fast buck. Does that mean he opposes the Stanford winner-takes-all series? “Not at all,” Broad said. “If I get picked for it I won't be, no. It's a fantastic option for the players to be in one of the biggest games in the sport's history. It's going to be worth money that was unthinkable in cricket even last year. Win a million bucks or go home with nothing - it's a real test of how you play under pressure.”

Stuart Broad will answer the nation's cricket questions during a live web chat at 11am tomorrow at aqa.63336.com