MELBOURNE: On a hot Saturday afternoon at the AH Butler Oval, Frankston Peninsula Cricket Club was playing against Camberwell Magpies Cricket Club in the local game on the outskirts of Melbourne. On the field, things were not going well for FPCC. Even as the current coach Peter Marshall sat with the team in the dugout, keeping an eye on the action, watching along the boundary ropes was former coach David McClean and his wife.
David hadn’t been at the ground for a while and his wife wanted to see some of the renovated facilities at the venue. As one reaches the Oval after a 40-minute cab ride from the Melbourne Cricket Ground, saying one particular name can change the mood of any person present— Scott Boland. Instantly there was a wide smile and one could sense the happiness and the feeling of pride that comes along. After all, this is the ground where the Australian pacer — who made his debut at the MCG with a record figure of 6/7 against England three years ago— arrived as a teenager from Parkdale almost 20 years ago.
“He was a very likable guy even then,” recalls David sitting in the viewing area of FPCC. “He struggled with his weight. But when we got Nick Jewell here as coach, he noticed Scotty. We used to push him pretty hard to get the best out of himself,” he added.
In the winter of 2009, Boland went to Nick and asked if he could put in some work through the winter. Nick, in turn, asked Boland to shed some weight and then would get the teenager admitted into a state programme. Boland followed through and so did Nick. “We got him to bowl to one of the touring sides in the summer. I can't remember who it was. And Greg Shippard, who was the Victorian coach at the time, noticed him there and took a bit of an interest. It was from there his career started to take off,” David mentioned.
Even then, Boland was not one of the prodigal talents who was fast-tracked. He had to work hard at every step, every level, bide his time to make his way up. Perhaps a little more than others. Boland first made the Victoria second XI, then eventually made his first-class debut in 2011 for Victoria. From there on, it was one long grind that lasted for a decade. That he was playing at an era where Australia have Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood — and had Peter Siddle, Mitchell Johnson and James Pattinson in the first half of the last decade — meant opportunities were hard to come by.
Boland, however, wasn’t thinking about all this. He never thought he would get this far in the first place. They used to call him ‘Barrel’ when Boland joined FPCC as a batting all-rounder. David, and other coaches at the FPCC, ‘chiseled’ him into the bowler he is. From his arm action to run-up to release, they worked on everything and due credit to Boland, who put in the work no questions asked.
From his early days, it was drilled into him not to chase pace but to pursue accuracy like Glenn McGrath. “We had another guy that played here - Darren Groves. Boland grew up watching Darren bowl out here. He used to get all the best players out in the competition - Brad Hodge, David Hussey, Cameron White. I think Scotty learned a lot from Darren. Week in, week out, bowling with him, watching the same sort of speed, maybe around 130KPH. Darren used to just get him out all the time. I think Scotty sort of realised then, ‘Gee, I can do that. That's what I'm going to do'. He still hits the deck pretty hard. I think the longevity of him has not been trying to bowl that fast all the time. He just hits that area,” explained David, before adding, “He used to be a little bit erratic so we sort of got his hands in a lot closer to his body. You hear him (on the follow-through when his hand hits the thigh). He still does it. He used to have bruises on his leg from whacking. He would just focus on hitting that spot.”
The moment one hears the ‘thud’ while Boland is bowling, you would know he was switched on. It is his relentless work ethic and accuracy that brought him a knack of getting wickets, that too, in clusters. And doing that for years eventually brought him the reward of the Baggy Green in 2021.
Boland became only the fourth indigenous cricketer to play Test cricket for Australia. And boy did he make a day out of it. Boland ran through the visiting England team, taking 6/7 on debut at his home ground. David’s son Michael McClean- one of the best friends of Boland, was there to witness it.
That was pretty phenomenal,” says Michael. “It was almost surreal, the fact that he was there in the first place. We were all just really happy that he got that opportunity. I think you probably have managed expectations in terms of how you expect people to go in their first game on the big stage in that sort of setting. I don't think any of us could believe what was going to happen. Every time we go to the cricket or football to watch and he's with us, he gets so many people coming up to him and asking him,” he added.
Even after such a debut, Boland wasn’t necessarily starting every Test since. In fact, he went 18 months without playing Test cricket between the 2023 Ashes and the Adelaide Test against India this month. That opportunity came at the cost of Hazlewood’s injury. Boland, as he always does, made the most of it, taking another five-wicket haul. However, Hazlewood came back for Brisbane before getting ruled out of the series.
Three years since his Test debut, Boland is all set to walk out on his home ground on Boxing Day. Much like everyone at the FPCC, Michael is thrilled for his friend. “I think it'll be pretty amazing for them (him, his family and friends) to see it again. It's probably going to be pretty hard to top what happened last time,” laughs Michael.
Maybe, or maybe not. But the thing that one can be certain of is Boland running with that ‘thud’ and hitting the right areas, asking questions from the Indian batters in front of his friends and family.