The Ashes 2025-26: Can Australia bowler Scott Boland dominate England once again?

Boland fulfilled his part of the bargain. His journey to cricket’s summit is a throwback – a far cry from academy pathways and state under-age teams.

“His transformation over two years was hard to believe,” Jewell says.

“He is almost like a hired assassin. He is so calm, cool and collected.

“You very rarely see a change in his attitude or demeanour whether it is going good or bad.

“At times you thought as a coach ‘am I getting through to this bloke?’ but you saw it in the changes in his game and performances.”

Success in the Melbourne grade system and years of wicket-taking in the Sheffield Shield opened the door to an initial foray in white-ball cricket.

Seen as a yorker specialist for the death overs, Boland played three T20s and 14 one-day internationals in 2016, around the same time he learned of his Indigenous roots through his maternal grandfather which would take him on a tour of England with an Aboriginal XI in 2018.

It is the start to Boland’s Test career that has been a statistical phenomenon, however.

Sixty-two wickets at an average of 16.53. At home those wickets cost just 12.63 runs.

No Australian to have taken as many as him – not Shane Warne, nor Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc or Josh Hazlewood – can better that record in the game’s history.

“Warney used to talk about developing a new ball every year,” says his state coach Chris Rogers, the former Australia opener.

“It is almost like Scotty has figured out one more thing every year and just keeps adding to his weaponry and his skill.”

He adds: “Bowling yorkers and delivering them under pressure was a skillset he owned for a while.

“The white-ball game has changed though and it is probably more about your change-ups and sequencing of different deliveries through an over and so forth.

“From that point of view he has then switched over to Test cricket.”

After 14 Tests, Boland stands as the most accurate pace bowler in the database of analysts CricViz.

He may not hoop the ball or deliver it at frightening speeds but, helped by the pace and bounce of Australian pitches and a new Kookaburra ball that seams, he has made a habit of finding enough movement to take a batter’s edge or beat their defence.

“When we do our measuring in terms of lines and lengths he is always at the top of our lists,” Rogers says.

“Every time he gets the ball he is almost exactly the same.”

While a hat-trick against West Indies earlier this year added to the list of achievements, it is six scalps on debut that have gone down in Australian sporting legend.

Haseeb Hameed’s thin snick, Jack Leach bowled shouldering arms, Jonny Bairstow pinned lbw, Joe Root’s edged drive, Mark Wood taken in the follow-through and Ollie Robinson snaffled at third slip.

Six for seven at The G.

“We didn’t know an awful lot about him,” Leach recalls.

“He seemed to be moving the ball just the perfect amount both ways and was finding the edge.

“I remember how relentless it was, him hitting his length hard.

“It wasn’t that it was fast but how hard he hit the pitch and that he made the ball talk.”