Scott Boland is desperate for another opportunity after his stunning Christmas-time entry into Test cricket says KEN PIESSE:
Scott Boland used to work part-time behind the bar at Doyle’s hotel in bayside Mordialloc, serving beers and picking up dirty glasses. His car, a battered blue Mitsubishi Magna, was littered with fast food wrappers.
His weight blew beyond 18 stone (118 kilograms) and despite promising performances in the seconds, many remained unconvinced that he could play Premier ‘Ones’.
Frankston Peninsula’s bowling coach, the celebrated West Australian Ian Brayshaw thought him breakdown material, believing his load-up was ‘crossed’. Furthermore he believed his action didn’t allow him to consistently swing the ball ‘out’.
Head coach Nick Jewell was more concerned at Boland’s sheer bulk. ‘He was huge,’ he said. ‘He had all this puppy fat’.
Boland won the Jack Ryder Medal in the second XI – with 355 runs and 37 wickets – but played only once in the firsts, a one-dayer in January.
At the club’s ‘Meet the Coach’ day in 2009, Jewell gave him a father of a lecture.
‘You want to play (more) firsts. But you won’t under me – not until you show me how much you really want it.’
Jewell told him he had to reduce his weight by at least five kilograms and he would select him the following October in Frankston’s first game.
‘We called him the Barrel back then – and still do now,’ he said. ‘He was then more a batting all-rounder. He had talent and could slog a few in the middle order and bowl a little bit. But in the condition he was in, he couldn’t bowl a whole heap.’
Still not yet 21, Boland substituted soup for fast food, reduced his beer intake and went on a fitness campaign alongside teammate Jim Miller. Within four months, he’d lost closer to 10 kilograms and had totally readjusted his diet.
Jewell kept his promise and on his senior debut, Boland took two for 7 against the Greenvale Kangaroos in the opening round of the 2009-10 season and went on to take 26 wickets in his breakout year.
He was still very much in apprenticship mode, however.
‘We were playing Fitzroy-Doncaster just after Christmas that first summer Scotty played regularly,’ said Jewell. ‘He was bowling to Lloyd Mash, who was then opening for Victoria. Mashy was either cutting him or leaving him. In mid-over, I walked up to Scott and said: “You’ve gotta go around the wicket to him, mate… make him play more.”
Boland: ‘I can’t… I don’t know how to, I’ve never done it.’
Jewell: ‘Honestly?’
Boland: ‘Yeah’.
Jewell: ‘Well, you’re about to learn’.
‘Now,’ says Jewell, ‘it’s one of his strongest weapons when the left handers are on strike. He can go around the wicket and straighten it.’
Within two years, a trimmer and faster Boland won rookie status and played his first games in Victoria’s second XI.
‘It was a bit of a whirlwind for him to go from Parkdale, to us and then into the Victorian system in such a short time,’ said Jewell. ‘But he deserved it all. He made sacrifices and showed us all how much he did want it. I couldn’t be prouder.’
Last Christmas, Jewell was playing golf down the Peninsula and was at the 19th, watching Boland tear through England on his fairytale Test debut.
‘I was having a schooner and I was standing there with the boys and I got goose bumps. They said, “are you alright?”
‘I was pretty emotional, remembering what he was when I first met him, to seeing him get all those wickets against the Poms. It was all so surreal.’
Jewell said Boland had responded to a bit of ‘tough love’ and made the most of his ability.
‘It didn’t take much – a couple of words… okay, quite a few words… but he then got down to his business.’
Boland was Frankston’s first pure born-and-bred Test representative.
Bryce McGain played in the club’s first ever game in 1993 and went on to play Test cricket for Australia, having crossed to Prahran.
‘The higher the level, the better he has played,’ said Jewell. ‘From Parkdale, to winning the Ryder, to playing in the ones, to getting a state second XI game, a rookie and then a senior Vic contract and onto Australia. It has been a wonderful story.’
Jewell says Boland’s ‘quiet determination’ and work ethic has been pivotal in his stunning late-career promotion.
‘There are so many players I played with over the journey, they came in and went out of the system. With their technique and physical attributes they should have been superstars, but they just couldn’t tick those last boxes: the mental side of it all, or the grinding work needed to get them there.
‘Scotty doesn’t say much. He doesn’t sledge, he works and works and gets the job done.’
With 18 wickets at under 10 in his first three Tests, Boland earned senior tours to Pakistan and Sri Lanka – he was 12th man in the opening Test in Rawalpindi – and while he didn’t play, he had been named in the Test squad to take on the West Indies later this month.
‘You have to be next cab, ready to go,’ the now father-of-two says.
And all these years later, what does Brayshaw, his old club coach. think of the progress of his protégé?
‘I was wrong, very wrong,’ he says. ‘I thought with his action he’d “break”, but he didn’t. I thought he’d never be able to swing it out, but he can. So much for my expertise!’ – with SIMON McEVOY
KEN PIESSE has covered cricket and football for more than 30 years in Melbourne. Despite that setback, Ken has written, published and edited 86 books on cricket and AFL football to become Australian sport’s most prolific author.
His latest cricket book is David Warner, The Bull, Daring to be Different with Wilkinson Publishing, out now
www.cricketbooks.com.au
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