If there is a theme to Scott Boland’s Test career, it’s making the most of limited opportunity. Finding a way into the team in 2021 when it seemed that chance had passed him by, remaining fourth in line for three spots, playing at the whim of absence, yet in those moments becoming a wrecking force, causing rashes of wickets, taking first-over strikes, threatening hat-tricks and once making good. So began the second Test in Gqeberha, another match he wasn’t supposed to play, on a day that didn’t get 13 overs bowled, yet there he was.
Making the score 20 for two. Squeezing into the game through the tiniest gap, like Eugene Tooms escaping from a cell. South Africa had a delayed start, a pause in the middle, and an early finish, meaning that they faced a total of 12.2 overs as drizzle eventually matured into downpour.
For the first burst of six overs, very little happened. Mitchell Starc was unhappy with his footing on the landing areas of the damp turf, and bowled mostly wide of the wicket. Josh Hazlewood beat the edge of debutant opener Marques Ackerman a few times, but his spell hadn’t yet grown into projecting the sense of menace that he conjured in Durban.
Then some rain, and an early lunch break, and after all that time, after three more balls from an interrupted Hazlewood, there was Boland, ahead of Pat Cummins, warming up to replace Starc. The first over, to Ackerman, seemed workmanlike, honest. But Ackerman might be bragging that he had survived it.
Because it took Boland only four more balls to remove Aiden Markram, then David Bedingham: South Africa’s two best bats of the previous Test, with a partnership in each innings that threatened to take control of the game, both gone. Central to Boland’s effectiveness is consistency and variation. The ball to Markram was literally the perfect length, especially to a player who had already lasered two cover drives to the fence from Starc’s bowling, and was feeling good.
The ball offered an illusion of fullness. It was further up than a standard seamer’s length, full enough to promise that it was there to drive, but fractionally too short to make good on its commitment. Markram made to get down on one knee anyway, but didn’t have time: nip off the pitch, a small inside edge, and a ball heading for the top of off-stump took out the top of middle instead.
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