ONEafter Scott Boland’s dream run at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, it seemed obvious that things would never get that easy again. In his second bowling innings on debut, the Victorian sailor rolled in for four overs and picked up six wickets. Catches flowed into the barrier, he hit the stumps, he hit the pads, and he even took a return catch. Another catch was thrown at the gorge. The longest he went without a wicket was five balls, and by the time he was done, the whole business had cost him seven runs.
When he came to bowling in his second match in Sydney, the dream continued. His first over was a virgin and Zak Crawley almost played on his pieces. His second over kept Crawley guessing, hitting the seam with a perfect position that sometimes popped away and sometimes in. The last ball of the overflow was a little fuller, and cut back from the seam to hit the top of the stump. Perfection.
His third over was close to the off-stump, keeping Joe Root quiet throughout, so when Boland offered some breadth in his fourth over, the England captain and best player chased it and fell to slip. Ben Stokes blocked the rest of it and another after lunch. Combined with Boland’s Melbourne outing, it yielded nine overs for eight wickets and seven runs.
In the end, perfection must pass. It may even have been a sense of relief for Boland to return to cricket normality after that, given the small startled waves he gave to the crowd on fine legs every time he returned to their sonic embrace. Stokes scored a single in Boland’s sixth over the innings, England’s first run in 70 balls. Shortly after, Jonny Bairstow scored a brace, so in what appeared to be a minor miracle, the batting pair scored three boundaries in the next four Boland overs.
Getting down to the ground literally happened in Boland’s 12th and final over of the day as he lost his footing by bowling last ball in the second session and fell heavily on the side. In apparent discomfort, he left the track and was driven for scanning. Free of injuries, he returned to the ground in his training set to test himself in the SCG nets, and was back on the field at the end of the day without being asked to bowl. Ending the day sore with double-digits for 25 was more in line with reality.
It was a similar story all around for Australia’s bowlers. Together with Boland, they put on a show through a rain-cut morning session that was no less breathtaking for its brevity. Cameron Green extracted alarming rejections and used it to make Dawid Malan uncomfortable before getting him to fend off a catch. Pat Cummins smashed a pair of gloves himself and Mitchell Starc burned an entire ball through Haseeb Hameed. In addition to reducing England to 36 for four, the innings also saw Australia lose three catches, got a wicket overturned for a no-ball and made Stokes survive a ball from Green who smashed the stump but did not disturb the bail. Far from being a source of frustration, these misses only reinforced the feeling that 10 wickets would fall in no time.
It was then a big surprise when things stopped going Australia’s way. At Headingley in 2019, it was a counter-attack from Stokes and Bairstow that changed the game. The version in Sydney will probably not lead to the same result, but it changed the atmosphere anyway. Nathan Lyon was targeted and the off-spinner embarked on the second-fastest 50 races of his career. Instead of falling right into his rhythm, he sometimes slipped too drunk or too short when he was repeatedly hit to the fence or over it. Winning that match was a big part of England adding 99 wicketless runs in one session.
Suddenly there was a sense of enjoyment in England’s games, which to that extent has been lacking on this tour, and there was a sense that things were not going as Australia’s way. That course seemed to have turned abruptly as Lyon dug their way through the Stokes defense with a ball bouncing on and as Cummins just about to loosen Bairstow’s thumb from his hand with the next ball. But Bairstow got treatment, made status and continued.
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A pair of Bairstow sixes followed shortly after the injured man swung, including a bold move from Green. Then it was Mark Wood – a wholehearted performer, but who hit too high as No. 8 – who entered Australia. Cummins had never been beaten in three sixes by a player in one inning. He now has it from a highly unlikely source. All six were hook shots, all with two catchers out in the deep. The first of them made Cummins laugh. By the third, the humor had disappeared.
None of this has much chance of changing the end, England are still 158 runs behind with three wickets in hand. But for one thing, the fun of the day means that it does not matter, and for another you never know what twists a game will bring. More to the point, after a series where almost everything has gone their way, Australia’s bowlers experienced for the first time in a row sessions where things did not.
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