Have you heard about Big Pat’s back? You must have by now. The eyes and ears of the cricketing world are zeroed in on a locus of about 10 inches of Pat Cummins’s lumbar region. Hushed whispers about the Australia Test captain’s “stress injury” after his side’s tour to the West Indies in July became a rumbling concern as the weeks passed and there was no reassuring statement from the Cummins camp. Ideally it would have been delivered by the man himself with a megawatt smile, just letting everyone know that he was locked in for a full part in the Ashes series.
By contrast, this week a more circumspect Cummins put his chances of playing at Perth in the first Test on 21 November as “probably less likely than likely”.
This England side won’t let Boland do that to them again, goes one school of thought. Have we learned nothing from history, goes the other. Beware the quiet man! No, we’re not talking about Iain Duncan Smith though, admittedly, the point still stands, but rather those quiet men of Ashes folklore who have a huge impact on a series. The ones who float under the radar or were barely mentioned before a ball was bowled but who set about altering the course of a series and the destination of the urn.
Chris Broad wouldn’t have kept Australian fast bowlers awake at night before the 1986‑87 tour but his three centuries went on to be decisive in winning the Ashes for England. Likewise, the veteran opener Chris Rogers demanded barely any column inches before the back-to-back Ashes in 2013 and 2014 but the Australian left-hander finished as the leading run scorer from the two sides across both series.
Ian Bell scored three crucial centuries in the English summer of the 2013 series but his achievements aren’t lauded as much as others seem to be. There’s no Bell’s Ashes moniker; there was no Triple Threat Bell DVD release, either. Chris Woakes, another of England’s most notably humble foot soldiers, played a vital hand 10 years later with 19 wickets in three Tests and important lower‑order runs to rescue England from 2-0 down.
From the taciturn John Cornish White in the 1928-29 series to Richard Ellison in 1985, Paul Reiffel in 1993 and Stuart Clark in 2006-07, the Ashes has seen plenty of star performances from those initially unfeared.
Boland may have got some tap last time around in England but his record in Australia is phenomenal – 49 wickets at 12.63. The last time he played a Test in Sydney he took 10 wickets against India.
Australia will miss Cummins whenever he doesn’t play, but in Boland they have a quiet man who knows how to make the ball sing in Australia. Yes he has big shoes to fill, but more dangerously than that – a point to prove.
