“Obviously I haven’t played a lot of cricket at the start of this season, but I feel like I’ve played enough cricket to feel like I’m in a very good position,” he said on Saturday afternoon. “My body feels great now. I had a couple of niggles that hurt a little, but my knee and foot feel great and I’m confident in how the ball will go.
“Our last nets session in Perth was Josh Inglis and I, we pink-balled for quite a few overs. “So having it in hand at the time and then obviously the overs we can get probably tomorrow from the looks of this weather will be “It’s also valuable. Then in Adelaide on Monday, then just normal preparation before a game, so have a good meal two days before the game and then get ready to play.”
“There are definitely no panic stations in our locker rooms,” he said. “Obviously there will be some talk about individual performances and everyone wants to perform very well in every game they play. But yeah, it’s like we’ve lost a game. They’re not toys out of the crib, I don’t think.
“We’ve talked as a team about our plans for the different Indian batsmen. I won’t tell you that, but we have pretty set plans. They might have a little adjustment after the boys have seen them again from Perth, because obviously [Yashasvi] Jaiswal batted very well there. KL Rahul also batted well in the second attack and really dug in. So we’ll probably have a chat over the next week and our plans might change slightly, but I’m pretty sure what we did in the first few games was good. “
It was also suggested that the workload Australia’s bowlers had to endure made the difference in the result of the Perth Test. “I thought our players played very well, too,” Boland said. “Maybe the only difference was that the Indian players had a really nice long break between the first innings and the second innings, where our break wasn’t that long.”
‘I probably thought maybe the opportunity had passed’
“I feel like teams that bat first can find the time when they want to bowl, if they bat really well on the first day, because if you get a new ball in the evening, it can be quite lethal.”
Scott Boland, on his experience in the pink ball test
There aren’t many teams that can’t fit a fast bowler capable of maintaining line and length all day. Boland averages 20.34 in ten Test matches, but those ten Test matches are just a fraction of what Australia has played (31) since its debut in December 2021.
“Obviously those guys [the big three Australia quicks] “They’ve been so resilient, they don’t miss many and no one should give up their spot at any point,” Boland said. “And they’re so dominant, last summer they didn’t bowl a ton of overs, but we can still win most of those games.
“So yeah, I probably thought maybe the opportunity had passed, but I worked really hard in the off-season to get my body in a place where I’m confident that if I get another chance, I’ll be able to perform.” for Australia again.
“I just knew that if I put the conversations I had with Ron [Andrew McDonald, the head coach] and george [Bailey, the chief selector] During the preseason when I was rehabbing a lot of it was trying to get my body in the right place, I didn’t want to rush anything and then get hurt again and then postpone my return to play for a while. . So we took things pretty slow in my rehab.”
“I played the second game for Victoria and then I missed a couple and then I played the ‘A’ game. So I had a pretty good preparation and now it’s just about developing, increasing the intensity in this game here and then also in the night sessions before Adelaide.”
Pink ball rhythms
Boland’s main skill – making the ball cut the seam – lends itself to pink-ball cricket, especially when the conditions start to get really useful as the day progresses and night falls. He has an average of 13.71 in two day-night tests.
“Generally, two different games can be played in the same match,” he said. “You can bowl during the day when the sun is out and it’s not doing much, and then you get to the night session and the ball starts moving a little bit. So I think it’s just for the players, we just communicate.” very well together about what the ball is doing and how the field is playing and then just switching between those modes as quickly as you can.”
Sometimes the strategy can also depend on the pink ball. “I feel like teams that bat first can find the time when they want to bowl, if they bat really well on their first day, because if you get a new ball in the evening, it can be pretty lethal,” Boland said. “If the batsmen come, they have batted during the day and they come to the night session. I think there have been a couple of cases where the ball hasn’t dominated the bat. I think maybe last year at the Gabba [against West Indies] We took the new ball and didn’t get as many wickets as we expected in that night session.
“But now, going back to Adelaide, I think they produce a really good cricket wicket that really suits the pink ball and helps it last a little bit longer because it gets a little bit softer after 30 or 40 overs compared to a red ball”.
Alagappan Muthu is Deputy Editor of ESPNcricinfo
