Hat-trick hero’s ice-cold response to England’s bad boy Bazball tactics

Softly-spoken seaming assassin Scott Boland has a simple message to England: sledge us to your heart’s content, it won’t worry us.

Cricket Australia is billing this summer’s Ashes as “the biggest sporting event in the country this year”. It may also be the most spiteful battle for the urn since the ill-tempered series on these shores in 2017, just months before Australian cricket crashed with the ball tampering scandal.

This time, it’s England who are the self-appointed arbiters of the moral code, casting judgment on the spirit of cricket while also resorting to time-wasting and sledging in their pursuit of victory.

Boland’s 14 Tests have all come during the Pat Cummins era when Australia has prioritised winning with skill over emotion.

“They can do whatever they want when they’re playing,” Boland said. “I think we’ve been pretty consistent in the way we’ve played since I’ve been in around the squad the last four years, I think nothing much has changed on how we play our cricket.

“It’s just going to be whoever takes on, whoever wins those big moments in the games and I know we’ve got match winners with the bat and the ball, so if they want to sledge, it’s fine, I don’t think it’s going to worry us too much.”

Boland, whose dollies to fans were whacked into the Yarra at a CA promotional event marking 100 days until the start of the Ashes, is more concerned with how to combat England’s aggressive tactics to him.

Bazball has been Boland’s Kryptonite. In the Ashes of 2023 in England, he claimed just two wickets at 115.5 with an economy rate of nearly five an over – compared with his career marks of 62 at 16.5. The prospect of livelier pitches at home has him confident of improved returns.

“They’re going to play aggressively and, if the wickets stay similar to what they’ve been over the last few years, I think we’re going to be in the game a lot of the time,” Boland said.

“I think it was the same when we got little parts of the England tour last time when the ball sort of moved around and it favoured the bowlers, but generally over there, the wickets are being a bit flatter and then when you come to Australia, certainly the last two or four years they’ve been bowler-friendly.”

Despite his stunning intervention last summer against India and a last-start hat-trick in the Caribbean, Boland is highly unlikely to start the series, barring injury to one of the big three Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood.

Boland is yet to discuss Ashes plans with selectors but a condensed schedule which packs in the final three Tests in 23 days means his services will be required at the back end of the series when bodies are weary and legs are heavy.

“I’d love to play all five, but I’d be hoping to play whatever comes up,” Boland said. “A few years ago there were seven Tests in the summer and I was hoping to play a couple and didn’t get any. And then last year there was only five Tests and I got three, so I’ve got to be ready for whenever an opportunity presents.”

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