Boland v Root is Australia v England

GH enjoys a random over

Nothing happened in the twenty-first over of England’s innings at the Sydney Cricket Ground today. No wicket fell. No run was scored. Nobody will talk about it in years to come; few would have remembered even ten minutes later. But about the Ashes of 2025-26, it imparted quite a lot.

“Boland bowlin’ bowlin’ ”

Joe Root was on strike, wending his way toward batting’s blue riband, held fifteen years by Sachin Tendulkar. Barrelling in on heavy boots from the Paddington End was Scott Boland. Two traditional cricketers in a traditional scenario: to watch them is almost to slip back to kinder, gentler days, fastened to craft, free of histrionics.

Boland was the build-that-man-a-statue revelation of the 2021-22 Ashes, Root the that’s-entertainment, reverse-ramping rampager of 2023. In that high English Boland, in fact, had a terrible time of it, a martyr to his own accuracy, which Bazball twisted into predictability. A hundred days before the commencement of these Ashes, in which he might not have played had Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood been fit, Boland conceded thinking over those experiences, and straining for positives: ‘I’ve obviously thought about it a lot since it happened in 2023. But I still think there were times in England where I bowled pretty well and just didn’t get a wicket. I’m a better bowler than I was back then.’