The everyman quick’s form stacks up but his selection for a home Test in Melbourne against South Africa is also about the vibe he brings
Photograph: Dave Hunt/EPAPhotograph: Dave Hunt/EPAor the last five years, Australia’s bowling attack has been a given. Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Nathan Lyon, set and forget. There have been change-ups to cover injury or when a second spinner has been needed in Asia, but there has been no question about the best four options in the country when the time has come to revert.
After all this time, though, Hazlewood is likely to be fit for the Boxing Day Test after missing a couple of matches, and is not quite an automatic selection to come back in. The rise of Scott Boland has been that precipitous. The Victorian quick made it into the Ashes squad a year ago with selectors wanting options to manage five Tests in quick succession.
An earlier Hazlewood injury notionally gave Boland his chance, although he was still effectively a specialist Melbourne pick: Michael Neser and Jhye Richardson had filled in for the previous Test, and while selectors cited minor injury concerns for both, surely they would have picked one if they were not so keen on using Boland. As it turned out, the Melbourne pitch was not flat, and the rest is history: six wickets for seven runs in 20 balls to wrap up the English and the urn.
Scott Boland salutes the MCG crowd after bowling Australia to victory in the Third Test against England last year.Boland kept his spot in Sydney and Hobart, finishing the series with the 1880s numbers of 18 wickets at 9.55 runs apiece. Afterwards he resumed his spot down the pecking order, joining the squad touring Pakistan and Sri Lanka as very much the fourth quick in matches that mostly only used two.
Instead, he’s back, slotting in thanks to more injuries after the first West Indies Test in Perth. He has picked up right where he left off. When Boland was on song in the Ashes there was this sense of irresistibility, a momentum that washed England away. A big part of this was that twice he took multiple wickets in an over. This year against the West Indies he did it again, three in six balls with a pink Kookaburra in an evening session.
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