There are dream Test debuts and then there is the match that Scott Boland just experienced. The 32-year-old Victorian was handed his Baggy Green cap on Boxing Day and just three days later ripped through England with a quite remarkable six-wicket haul that saw Australia retain the Ashes at the earliest opportunity.
The coup de grâce came at 11.49am on the third morning, less than half way through the scheduled series, when Cameron Green pegged back Jimmy Anderson’s off-stump to secure an unassailable 3-0 lead. England were all out for a meagre 68 in just 27.4 overs, having somehow conspired to lose by an innings and 14 runs in a match where their opponents had stuck just 267 on the board.
As Australia’s players managed to catch up with Green’s haring sprint of celebration (Boland among the throng that engulfed the giant all-rounder, and Pat Cummins savouring his first series win as captain) English cricket was in a state of humiliation. Joe Root had top-scored with 28, falling 80 runs short of Mohammad Yusuf’s record 1,788 in a calendar year, but once again his team-mates had melted around him.
Instead the only records set by way of calendar year were England registering their ninth defeat in 2021, surpassing a previous worst of eight, achieved four times, and registering 54 ducks to match a mark set by their forebears in 1998. They had also found themselves on the receiving end of the fastest Ashes five-wicket haul by an Australian, Boland requiring just 17 deliveries either side of stumps on day two to cap a stunning debut.
This was also England’s lowest total in Australia since 1904 and yet despite the previous evening’s collapse against a rampant attack, stumbling to 31 for four in response to a first innings deficit of 82, the tourists started the day with Root and his vice-captain, Ben Stokes, at the crease with a chance of setting their hosts a tricky target on what was clearly a spicy pitch for the seamers.
The sun was out and two early straight drives from the pair hinted at things easing up a touch. But it was an illusion, Mitchell Starc starting the latest gutting of England’s soft underbelly when his 17th ball of the morning nipped back into Stokes and kissed the top of his middle stump. At 46 for five, 36 runs in arrears, surely there was a player who could stick around with Root long enough to make Australia bat again.
But Boland, just the second Indigenous men’s Test cricketer in Australia’s history, had other ideas. Replacing Starc at the Great Southern Stand End, and with two wickets to his name from that febrile previous evening, he simply blasted his way through England’s middle order to the sheer delight of his home crowd in Melbourne and staggering final figures of six for seven in four overs.
Jonny Bairstow was dropped by Green in the gully off Boland’s first delivery but it mattered little, the bustling right-armer pinning his man lbw on the backfoot four balls later. Bairstow reviewed with some justification, and yet umpire’s call on both impact and height meant he had to walk off with five to his name.
Boland’s follow-up over was the moment the match was effectively done. Root was past 1,700 Test runs for the year but smarting from the latest blow to his box this series. Perhaps consumed by nagging pain and the sense of general hopelessness of a dream dashed, the England captain lost focus, fencing at a ball that nipped away and giving David Warner a simple catch at first slip.
Five came courtesy of Mark Wood plopping a return catch into Boland’s hands third ball – duck No 51 for England in 2021 – with a sixth coming moments later when Robinson, equalling an ignominious record, fenced to Marnus Labuschagne at third slip.
When Green knocked over Anderson soon after, Australia’s party – and the latest round of recriminations in the England camp – could begin.