From Frankston Peninsula to Australia: Scott Boland’s amazing cricket journey
Former Frankston Peninsula coach Nick Jewell recalls Ashes hero Scott Boland’s early days, the car full of fast food wrappers and the first time he bowled around the wicket.
South East
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Nick Jewell remembers a brief but significant chat with Scott Boland in the winter of 2009.
It was at Frankston Peninsula Cricket Club’s meet the coach day at Frankston RSL.
Jewell, the Victorian opening batsman, had just become the Heat’s new coach and he was determined to set high standards straight away.
Boland was 20 and coming off winning Premier Cricket’s 2nd XI player of the season medal the previous season.
“I didn’t know much about him aside from he obviously had a bit of talent,” Jewell said.
“He was more a batting all-rounder then. He slogged a few in the middle order and bowled a little bit.
“But in the condition he was in he couldn’t bowl a whole heap.”
Jewell set Boland a challenge.
“I said, ‘if you come back five kilos lighter than what you are now on day one of pre-season we will pick you in the seniors first game’,” he said.
“And he went and did it.”
Boland took 2-7 against Greenvale Kangaroos in the opening round of the 2009-10 season and went on to take 26 wickets as the Heat made the finals.
Frankston Peninsula’s bowling coaches that season were Shaun Graf and Ian “Sticks” Brayshaw and they worked with a raw but talented Boland.
“Within probably two years he got a (Victorian) rookie contract or was playing second XI games with the Vics,” Jewell said.
“So it happened really quickly after that.
“I’m not saying where he is now happened quickly because it’s been a 10-year graft in Shield cricket, but it happened really quickly from being a seconds competition medal winner to playing Vic seconds and getting a rookie contract.
“It was a bit of whirlwind for him at that early stage.”
Jewell said Boland responded to a bit of “tough love” at Frankston in those early days.
“He didn’t take much, a couple of words and he started going about his business,’’ Jewell said.
“To his credit he went and did it himself.
“From memory he was working at Doyles hotel (in Mordialloc) picking up dirty glasses and working behind the bar. So, no doubt, his diet end everything wasn’t fantastic. He certainly changed that.
“We had a laugh about it the other day. He used to have a really old battered blue Mitsubishi Magna. I remember walking past it one day and there was a truckload of fast food wrappers on the floor in the car. I said, ‘who’s car is that?’ And yeah, it was Barrel’s car.
“We had a conversation after that…`how’s your diet coming along, mate?’”
Jewell recalls Boland encountering a new challenge during a Frankston Peninsula game against Fitzroy Doncaster in January, 2010.
He was bowling to then state opener Lloyd Mash, a left-hander.
“Mashy was either cutting him or leaving it,” Jewell said.
“I said (to Boland), ‘you’ve got to go around the wicket to him, mate’. He said, ‘I can’t, I don’t know how to, I’ve never done it’.
“Honestly, and this is on game day.
“I said, ‘you’re about to learn’.
“And now that’s one of his strongest weapons when the left handers are on strike, he can go around the wicket and straighten it, it’s a deadly weapon.
“He’d never bowled around the wicket to a left hander.”
Since its inaugural season in 1993-94, Frankston Peninsula Cricket Club has aimed to produce a Test cricketer.
Bryce McGain played in the club’s first ever game in 1993 and went on to play Test cricket for Australia, although he’d moved to Prahran by that stage.
Jewell said Boland was Frankston Peninsula’s first “pure, born and bred’’ Test cricketer.
“One thing he’s always done is the higher he’s gone he’s raised his performance to the higher level: from Parkdale to winning the medal in the twos, to playing in the ones, to getting a seconds game, to getting a rookie contract, then a Vic contract and onto Australia,” Jewell said.
“The higher he’s gone the better he’s played which is a great trait to have.
“A lot of it is mental. Absolutely. There are so many players I played with over the journey, they came in and went out of the system…by all rights with their technique and physical attributes they should have been superstars but they just couldn’t tick that one last box, the mental side of it, or the grind.”
Jewell said Boland’s quiet determination was the secret to his success.
“He doesn’t say much. He doesn’t sledge, he just gets the job done,” he said.
“And he’s not bluff. He’s not a guy who can come into the state squad or into the change rooms and bluff his way — fake until you make it, so to say — it’s not his personality.
“A lot of blokes — I was probably a bit like that — are a bit boisterous and you find your niche in the team playing a certain role. That’s not him at all, his niche in the team is to perform and he does it unbelievably well.”
Jewell said it was surreal watching Boland take his first Test wickets at the MCG last month.
“I was at the golf course when he got his first wicket,” Jewell said.
“I was having a schooner and I was standing there with the boys and I got goosebumps. They said, ‘are you alright?’ I got a bit emotional about it.
“Remembering what he was when I first met him to seeing him get a wicket on Boxing Day…it’s bloody great.
“He’s a ripper.”
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