Boland eyes chance to keep pressure on KL Rahul

The final auditions for the vacant batting spot in Australia’s Test side will again dominate the discussion in the second four-day A-team encounter at the MCG, but quick bowler Scott Boland is eyeing the opportunity to keep the pressure on India Test squad member KL Rahul after he flew in early to feature for India A.

Rahul, who played the first Test against New Zealand before being left out when Shubman Gill was fit, and reserve wicketkeeper Dhruv Jurel left India ahead of the rest of the Test group in order to feature against Australia A to get some match practice.

Rahul, who averages just 20.77 in Australia from five Tests despite a century at the SCG in 2015, could come into contention for the first Test in Perth if Rohit Sharma misses the game for personal reasons and Boland sees an opportunity to leave a mark.

“I was lucky to bowl to him in a Test over in India a couple of years ago but it’ll be nice to play against him in our backyard,” he said. “He’s a world-class player but someone I think we can get on top of pretty early and hopefully stay on top of him for the majority of the summer.”

Like a number of Australian players, Boland noted India’s 3-0 loss against New Zealand but cautioned how much to read into it. The visiting quicks did the damage in the first Test before the spinners took over in Pune and Mumbai to secure a famous whitewash.

“There’s so much more bounce here, more seam,” Boland said. “The way they’ll structure their team will be completely different to what you see over in India.”

The majority of India’s Test squad won’t have a full game in Australia before the first Test after the scheduled intra-squad game with India A was turned into match simulation with a view it giving more flexibility to the preparation.

“I think sometimes when you play that practice match, we’re travelling with a squad of 19 players and it was only three days that were allotted to us,” Rohit said. “And I don’t know how much workload we can get done in those three days in terms of getting everyone prepared.

“So we, as a management as well, we feel that rather than having that, the match simulation where the batters can spend more time in the middle, batting in the middle, and then the bowlers as well can bowl a lot of balls, so that is something that, we as a team feel more comfortable doing rather than playing a practice game because game time is not a problem. All of us have been playing a lot of cricket. So it’s just about spending time in the middle.”

Boland is expected to be the reserve quick in the Test squad and is being primed to feature at some point with a belief that the big three getting through the entire home summer last season was an “outlier” and reinforcements will likely be needed.

Boland averages 12.21 in Tests at home and has previously admitted he expected to get an opportunity last season only be denied by the durability of Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood, aided by none of the matches going five days.

He has been working his way back from injury early this season after a county deal with Durham was aborted due to a heel problem and he got through 28 overs in the Sheffield Shield against New South Wales last month. Boland said he was under a “little bit of restriction” in terms of his overs in that fixture but didn’t expect to be held back for Australia A.

“It felt like a long six months between games,” he said. “Remember being out on the ground in the Shield game and was just really happy to be back playing cricket. Haven’t had too many breaks for injury throughout my career so was different going through all the rehab.

“Luckily [we’ve] got really good physios and support staff at Cricket Victoria. So lucky I could lean on them, because few times I was like, ‘[are] any of these things getting better? But it’s all come good now and feeling really good.”