Australia has spent years wondering what to do at No. 3. The last test match may finally have provided the answer. He is 37, bowls right-arm fast-medium, and until this week nobody had considered batting to be one of his more obvious strengths.
There comes a point in every selection debate when you have to stop overthinking things.
Australia has tried form. Technique. Experience. Potential. Shield runs. Incumbency. Horses for courses. Giving blokes another Test. Then another series. Then another summer.
Perhaps the answer has been standing at fine leg all along.
Scott Boland. Australian No. 3.
I am only partly joking.
At Gqeberha, Australia were bowled out for 99 in their first innings. Nic Maddinson disappeared in the opening over, which meant the traditional nightwatchman procedure was activated.
Enter Boland. At No. 3.
This experiment lasted 14 balls and produced two runs, so admittedly the early data set was not encouraging. But importantly, Australia had established proof of concept because Scotty did survive the evening and remained not out overnight.
They had put Scott Boland at first drop. And nobody died.
Then came the second innings.
Australia, following on and staring at a sizeable defeat, needed something increasingly unfashionable in modern Test batting: someone to remain at the crease.
Boland obliged.
Forty runs. 166 balls. Six boundaries.
No reverse ramps. No existential crisis. No sudden urge to manufacture something because three consecutive deliveries had failed to provide dopamine.
Just defence. Leave. Defence. Leave.
At one stage Scott Boland was essentially Rahul Dravid with a Victorian plumbing licence.
He spent 166 deliveries annoying South Africa, helped Travis Head put on 59, survived long enough to bat with three different partners and produced the longest innings of his Test career. Only Head faced more balls for Australia in the innings.
This, inconveniently, is happening while Australia continues to wrestle with the real No. 3 position.
Marnus Labuschagne made 14 and 39 at Gqeberha. He entered the tour having gone more than three years without a Test century. There have been technical discussions, selection discussions, confidence discussions and presumably several extremely detailed spreadsheets.
Boland’s technical plan appears to contain approximately three instructions:
Watch ball. Defend ball. Do not get out.
Cricket can be terribly complicated sometimes.
And before the emails arrive, no, Scott Boland is not actually Australia’s best No. 3.
Probably.
But that is precisely why his 40 was such a magnificent little indictment of what happened around him.
Boland wasn’t batting for his career. He wasn’t trying to prove he belonged in the top six. He wasn’t carrying years of analysis, expectation or technical tinkering into the middle.
He had one job.
Make them get you out.
Remarkably, several specialist batters appeared to regard this as an optional component of Test cricket.
Steve Smith eventually came in below Boland because of a neck problem and made three from 20. Australia had already been dismissed for 99 earlier in the match. South Africa ultimately won by an innings and 31 runs despite almost two days being lost to rain.
And after it was over, Pat Cummins pointed directly towards Head and Boland when discussing what Australia needed to do better.
Sometimes, Cummins said, it was about getting through difficult spells and sticking to your method.
Again:
Head and Boland.
One is one of the most destructive Test batters on the planet.
The other was selected because Nathan Lyon was left out on a green pitch.
That is where the joke stops being entirely funny.
Boland’s innings was ugly in the most beautiful Test-match way possible. He wasn’t trying to win a highlights package. He was attempting to occupy physical space for as long as South Africa would tolerate him.
They tolerated him for 166 balls.
Eventually Wiaan Mulder produced one that seamed back and bowled him for 40.
Proper delivery, proper dismissal.
No gift wrapping.
Which, given the circumstances, may have been Boland’s most damning contribution of all.
So as Australia heads to Cape Town with the series level at 1–1, the selectors have plenty to think about.
Cameron Green is available. Josh Inglis is available. Positions are under scrutiny. The batting order is again a national conversation.
I merely ask that George Bailey keeps an open mind.
Scott Boland has now batted at No. 3 for Australia.
He has demonstrated patience. He has demonstrated technique.
He has demonstrated an ability to leave the ball outside off stump.
And, most importantly, after 166 deliveries of Test-match resistance, he has demonstrated something Australia desperately needed at Gqeberha: a profound and apparently unfashionable objection to getting out.
Give the man the baggy green. Actually, he already has one.
Fine. Give him first drop.
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