Australia’s Scott Boland appeals unsuccessfully for the wicket of India’s Shubman Gill during play on the first day of the fifth cricket test between India and Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground, in Sydney, Australia, Friday, Jan. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
There should be a contest held to guess how many bad balls Scott Boland has bowled in the Tests he has played this series? The easy guess is: Zero. Such has been his lethal accuracy, lengths, line, and seam-movement that India might well have wished that Josh Hazlewood never got injured. The SCG pitch had a luxuriant grass cover, offered movement, but the above contest can hold good for all the games he has played this series. Ball after ball, spell after spell, day after day, without a smirk, one mean word or stare, he has been cutting down the Indians.
To think he once used to be a plump 18-year old who weighed 118 kgs and nicknamed Barrel, and whose club coach had to give him an ultimatum to lose weight if he wanted to play for the first eleven! The words as the coach Nick Jewell recalled years later were: “You want to play for the first team more but you won’t under me, until you show me how much you really want it.”
Ever since that day, and especially after he discovered his aboriginal roots in his mid-20s, he has been showing the world how much he really wants it. Boland doesn’t show too much emotion on the field. There were a couple of moments that stand out. One came on Friday when he knocked down Yashasvi Jaiswal off the first ball he bowled to him. Over the last two weeks especially, particularly after the Brisbane Test, Jaiswal has been working this drill at the nets. He would walk out from his stance, at least a couple of steps down the track, and try to get as close as possible to the ball. Every day he has been at it, trying to nail down that approach, and has been doing so in the Melbourne game also, where he scored two 80-plus scores in the two innings.
Scott Boland picked up his 50th Test wicket… and nearly had a hat-trick too! #AUSvIND | #MilestoneMoment | @nrmainsurance pic.twitter.com/M5PTfgJnL0
— cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) January 3, 2025
But Boland had an ace up his sleeve this time: the pitch. He threw into that the cocktail of length, line, and the movement. He whipped down the ball in his imitable fashion short of length but just outside the leg stump. Jaiswal, who was walking down, had to open up his body to adjust to that line. Then came the pitch. And Boland’s fingers that had cut on the seam. The ball jagged right across Jaiswal, who was totally squared-up as he poked and the ball took a slice of edge along with it.
Meltdown moment
It then triggered the first of the two moments. As he ran towards his team-mates in the slips to celebrate, Boland clapped his hands as he cast a look at the departing batsman. That’s the closest he was probably ever going to have a ‘teasing celebration’. “I haven’t seen him too emotional. Never seen him angry. Always a soft voice. He is not the one to sledge or even chirp on a field. He just bowls and walks away,” his mentor Paul Stewart had told this newspaper.
Then came Kohli. Boland should have taken him out first ball with a lovely delivery that kicked up outside off from back of length and straightened just outside off. He would bowl the same ball to KL Rahul in the past, but the line would be on the off stump. With Kohli he pushes it just a bit outside; he has that kind of control. But Kohli’s edge was almost wondrously taken by the combo of Steve Smith, who did all the hard work of lunging, scooping, before and Labuschagne, who caught the pop-up. But television replays showed the ball had brushed the grass. Boland would strike again with a similar delivery, a touch outside off this time and Kohli would succumb.
TWO IN TWO FOR SCOTT BOLAND!#AUSvIND
— cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) January 3, 2025
That wicket also showed how Boland has two deliveries that he keeps alternating. The nip-backer and the straightener. But smartly, now and then, as he once did at Adelaide to surprise Shubman Gill, would slip in a fuller one. Or the occasional bouncer, but it seemed triggered after captain Pat Cummins’s chat with him. Left to himself, that back of length nip-backer and the straightener from the same area seems to be his chief weapons.
“He has been amazing,” Rishabh Pant would rave at the end of the day. “The way he bowls line and length, especially in Test cricket, is quite difficult … it feels like he has been playing for a long time.” What he meant by the last line was that Boland doesn’t feel like a bowler who is only able to sneak into the team if one of the regular troika is injured.
Pant should know. Not only did he cop bruises on his body from Boland’s kickers but also fell to him. Such was the relentless hammering, alternating from over to the round the stumps, that Pant finally lost patience and pulled. The ball climbed on him, upset his timing, and lobbed to mid-on.
It was when Pant was batting, not here but at Adelaide, that Boland had shown his most expressive reaction on this tour. Pant had charged out to lash him over covers, and even Boland, that most non-expressive man, couldn’t but show his surprise. The eyes bulged, eyebrows raised, and a quizzical, but bemused, expression had settled on his face.
Once he took care of Pant at Sydney, he tightened the noose immediately on the new batsman Nitish Reddy with a ball not dissimilar to the one that he bowled to Kohli. Reddy thought about playing, then withdrew his bat, but it was too late for the jail-break – nick and gone.
The hat-trick ball was near perfect though he didn’t get the wicket of Washington Sundar. From round the stumps, it tailed in from outside off but not as much as Washington thought. The left-hander had a poke and a miss, and the SCG crowd sighed. He would soon end his bowling for the day with figures that read 20-8-31-4. How he has harassed India’s batsmen this tour!
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
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