Scott Boland and the rise of the fast-medium line-and-length merchants

FROM THE MAGAZINE: Barney Ronay wonders whether the technique of modern batters can handle today's fast-medium craftsmen

Barney Ronay writes every month for The Cricketer. This is an abridged version of his 'The Backstop' article that features in our February 2023 magazine. To read the full version, grab a copy of the magazine by clicking here.

And you shall know the end times by the appearance of signs, omens, false prophets.

If Hollywood films have taught us anything about end of days scenarios it is that they come with a familiar set of indicators. Dogs barking at the skies. Jeff Goldblum streaking towards the Pentagon on a bicycle. Clouds of birds taking off in a field watched by bowlheaded children who seem to know something.

Plus of course, the presence of prophets, street preachers, eerie priests and the like. Or in the case of Test match cricket, the rise of a set of fast-medium line-and-length merchants with all-time great bowling numbers.

Welcome to the age of the two-day collapse, of disposable openers, of competence as an irresistible force. Never mind absent crowds or format favouritism.

It seems this is how Test cricket is going to go, strangulation by basic accuracy, and by a lack of basic defensive technique.

Behold, for I am Scott Boland, bringer of death.

It has been interesting watching Australian pundits trying to wrestle with the contradictions of the current southern summer. On one hand this Australia Test team just keeps on winning, driven on by what is, on the numbers, one of the greatest bowling attacks in the long history of Australia having great bowling attacks.

Here come Mitch, Pat, Scotty and the rest with their regulation skittlings, their two-day rollings-over, and the sense around it all of a lack of basic resistance, of a thing that is now withering from the inside.

Boland is the most interesting figure here, much-loved for his everyman quality, that sense as he stands there with a microphone quivering in his hand that he’s won a competition to ask Darlene to marry him live on TV.

A year into his Test career Boland has 28 wickets at 12. He has basically rolled in and bowled the same ball a thousand times: decent speed, no length or line to hit, seam-curious but not ripping or jagging or hooping.

^{England bowler James Anderson speaks with head coach Brendon McCullum [Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images]}

Faced with this staple competence, the fast-bowling equivalent of boiled potatoes, the Test batsmen of England, West Indies and South Africa have collectively lost their minds.

How do we cope with this thing, this avenger, out there asking unanswerable questions of a skillset we no longer possess?

It's not just Boland. Scroll down the all-time list of Test bowling averages and judging by the current numbers the four greatest fast bowlers of the last 60 years are Boland, Kyle Jamieson (72 wickets at 19), Ollie Robinson (60 at 20), and Marco Jansen (41 at 19).

Ahead of these pathfinders are mutton-chopped Victorians called things like The Demon and the Slinger.

Just behind them are such second-raters as Malcolm Marshall, Curtly Ambrose and Glenn McGrath.

The reality, of course, is that simple bowling virtues are now enough. This five-day war of attrition is being staged without the proper prep to sustain itself.

One of my own earliest memories of Test cricket is the agony of watching New Zealand's Bruce Edgar on their 1986 England tour. He had had two shots, the angry, sullen nurdle and the angry, sullen block. Each slow-baked dismissal felt like a wild and thrilling release.

But he also scored a match-turning 83 off 298 balls at Lord's. And he would have left or blocked the likes of Boland into mediocrity.

This is not about talent or volume of runs. Edgar retired averaging a notch higher than Zak Crawley.

^{Zak Crawley edges to a waiting slip fielder [Stu Forster/Getty Images]}

There is a place for both of these things, Crawley wafting like a drunken lord, reaching always for the inside out air-nick drive, cantering off to be high-fived by the coach-bro support group.

But you also need that base level of Edgarism, the marathon skills, without which the game basically collapses.

This isn't to pick on Boland. The same deskilling has contributed to the miraculous late-career bloom of James Anderson.

And perhaps this is why England's new approach to Test batting, the Bazball merger of short and long-form technique, makes sense. Trying to bat like a classic Test player without the skills or the lead-in time is a recipe for collapse.

Maybe the way to survive, and to force this dying form to evolve, is to stop trying to survive, to transform the risks into your kind of risks, to attack because attack is what you have; to fight above all the prospect of death by Boland.

Inside our February issue of The Cricketer magazine, you'll also find:

- Cover feature: The game's leading writers weigh in on where they think Test cricket will be in 20 years
- David Gower talks cricket over lunch with Sir Tim Rice
- Mike Brearley asks if ‘Bazball’ will pass the Test of time
- Ebony Rainford-Brent faces our questions on her start in cricket and work with the ACE charity
- Dean Wilson’s diary from England’s tour of Pakistan
- Mickey Arthur: County cricket is revered all over the world
- George Dobell says we can all make cricket more inclusive
- Nick Friend: Australia remain team to beat in Women’s T20 World Cup
- Andrew Samson pores over the stats of 2022
- And much, much more

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