By now, anyone who watches Test cricket has an idea of the kind of person Scott Boland is. Calm, self-effacing, at ease with his work but never with the attention that accompanies it. While Australian audiences have enjoyed the teenage brilliance of Sam Konstas since his dancing debut, there is a deeper wave of appreciation, even love, for the fast bowler who is cheered towards the fence every time he changes his position on the field and responds with a smile or a raised hand that is half acknowledgment, half apology.
Choosing an unlikely hero was less of a surprise in his three Tests in Melbourne, as hometown Victoria, but the same has now been the case in Sydney in his two forays at the SCG. On the first day of the fifth Test against India on Friday, Boland was again the crowd favourite, nearly going on a hat-trick in the first session, almost completing a hat-trick in the third and finishing the best of the bowlers. with four for 31 while toppling India for 185.
Some important milestones have arrived for Boland. First, his 50th wicket, a modest marker but one that separates brief adventures in Test cricket from the substance that can be called a career. It’s a figure that has often seemed improbable for Boland: at 32 years old before his first call-up; after a tough match at Nagpur and a tougher match at Leeds in 2023; or just a few weeks ago, when he spent 18 months on the bench behind Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood, still in good form. Opportunities for Boland were destined to be occasional, even after his devastating Ashes debut and a breakthrough final performance in the World Test Championship.
The other milestone was his 2,000th birth, the limit to be counted on statisticians’ lists for career figures. Boland took his wickets at 18 runs apiece, a mark bettered by only a dozen bowlers. Ten of them were performed before the First World War: the others are Bert Ironmonger from the 1930s and Frank Tyson from the 1950s. This is not just a heartwarming story about a modest Australian worker receiving a modest reward . This is someone operating at the highest level. Boland’s numbers after his debut were outlandish, but the increase in sample size didn’t decrease them much.
Boland’s career has been a lesson in humility. He played state cricket at a time when the MCG barely moved, with occasional forays down the road where the Junction Oval was its only rival for sleepiness. His response was implacably precise. For a period around 2016, he transferred this to yorker bowling with the white ball, teaming up with John Hastings to turn the final four overs of each Melbourne Stars innings, a 24-ball parade down the return field. Both briefly featured on national white-ball teams. Rejected, Boland returned to service at the G.
Years later, after all that toil, Test cricket turned around and gave him something different. Introduced as a workhorse, Boland’s career at the top was defined by burst wickets. The most amazing part of his Test adventure was how he can explode.
Here, when he had Yashasvi Jaiswal caught at gully by Beau Webster on debut, it was Boland’s seventh strike in his first innings. It looked like there were eight when Virat Kohli almost slipped, but Steve Smith’s save on Marnus Labuschagne was waved away by the third umpire.
If it’s not the first, it’s the first spell: of the aforementioned 50 career wickets, 21 came during this period. Then, even when he enters subsequent spells, he strikes early in them: 12 wickets in total in the first over of any spell, 15 in the second, 10 in the third, which is the major part of its total. There must be something about his style that is particularly difficult to play against before players get used to it.
Many of these first strikes return multiple wickets in one go. His Melbourne debut blew up, removing Joe Root and Jack Leach in one evening, then Mark Wood and Ollie Robinson the next. In Adelaide against the West Indies, he got Kraigg Braithwaite, Shamarh Brooks and Jermaine Blackwood in his first innings. Against South Africa in Brisbane, he claimed two in both innings. In this World Test Championship chase, Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja emerged as one. Five different times he took two or three wickets in consecutive overs, and would have done so six times in Sydney without a dropped catch.
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His three-wicket attempt in three balls in that match was as close as anyone could get without finishing it. Rishabh Pant gifted the first wicket with a half-hearted pull, no foot movement and no balance as he dunked him at mid-off, but the score smothering which Boland contributed to was 1.55 runs per over played its role. Nitish Kumar Reddy had just come off his century in Melbourne, but had lost the first ball, unable to cope with the abrupt bounce that Boland extracted as the ball flew away.
From left-handed to right-handed to left-handed, but Boland rarely had trouble landing one on the spot at the first request. The ball comes back to Washington Sundar, passing the edge so close they could have whispered to each other, while climbing even more absurdly, sending the batter back, ending up in the wicketkeeper’s face. Alex Carey dropped it, but let’s not dwell on that.
Boland, who had to settle for a life on the margins, was once again so close. Then he resumed his shy demeanor, took his cap and headed to a powerful ovation to once again become the solitary figure with the beautiful leg. Bathed in assertion, offering a little wave, too shy to attract attention even after coming within a millimeter of a Test hat-trick.
