Categories: Cricket

Super stand-in Scott Boland steps up again as Australia turn screw on India

India 185; Australia 9-1 on day one of fifth Test at SCG
Boland millimetres from hat-trick as he takes 4-31

By now, anyone who watches Test cricket has an idea what kind of person Scott Boland is. Quiet, self-effacing, at home with his work but never with the attention that accompanies it. While Australian crowds have enjoyed the teenage flashiness of Sam Konstas since his all-dancing debut, there is a deeper swell of appreciation, even love, for the fast bowler who gets cheered back to the fence every time he changes fielding position, and responds with a flicker of a smile or a raised hand that is half acknowledgment, half apology.

Being chosen as an unlikely hero was less of a surprise during his three Melbourne Tests, as a home town Victorian, but the same has now been the case in Sydney on both of his forays to the SCG. On day one of the fifth Test against India on Friday, it was Boland as crowd favourite again, nearly finding himself on a hat-trick in the first session, nearly completing a hat-trick in the third, and finishing the best of the bowlers with four for 31 while knocking over India for 185.

Source: Cricket - The Guardian