• Just 12.2 overs possible on first day of second Test

• Bowler seizes his opportunity with two wickets

If there is a theme to Scott Boland’s Test career, it’s making the most of limited opportunity. Finding a way into the team in 2021 when it seemed that chance had passed him by, remaining fourth in line for three spots, playing at the whim of absence, yet in those moments becoming a wrecking force, causing rashes of wickets, taking first-over strikes, threatening hat-tricks and once making good.

So began the second Test in Gqeberha, another match he wasn’t supposed to play, on a day that didn’t get 13 overs bowled, yet there he was. Making the score 20 for two. Squeezing into the game through the tiniest gap, like Eugene Tooms escaping from a cell.

South Africa had a delayed start, a pause in the middle, and an early finish, meaning that they faced a total of 12.2 overs as drizzle eventually matured into downpour.

For the first burst of six overs, very little happened. Mitchell Starc was unhappy with his footing on the landing areas of the damp turf, and bowled mostly wide of the wicket. Josh Hazlewood beat the edge of debutant opener Marques Ackerman a few times, but his spell hadn’t yet grown into projecting the sense of menace that he conjured in Durban.

Then some rain, and an early lunch break, and after all that time, after three more balls from an interrupted Hazlewood, there was Boland, ahead of Pat Cummins, warming up to replace Starc. The first over, to Ackerman, seemed workmanlike, honest. But Ackerman might be bragging that he had survived it. Because it took Boland only four more balls to remove Aiden Markram, then David Bedingham: South Africa’s two best bats of the previous Test, with a partnership in each innings that threatened to take control of the game, both gone.

Central to Boland’s effectiveness is consistency and variation. The ball to Markram was literally the perfect length, especially to a player who had already lasered two cover drives to the fence from Starc’s bowling, and was feeling good. The ball offered an illusion of fullness. It was further up than a standard seamer’s length, full enough to promise that it was there to drive, but fractionally too short to make good on its commitment. Markram made to get down on one knee anyway, but didn’t have time: nip off the pitch, a small inside edge, and a ball heading for the top of off-stump took out the top of middle instead.

Having just seen this, Bedingham had to play. The ball was the same one, or near enough to fox the batter. It was perhaps half a ball’s diameter wider, and a couple of diameters shorter. It could have seamed in. Instead it seamed away, even more slightly. Bedingham was lunging toward it, trying to defuse the danger. Instead, bat murmured at ball on its way to the wicketkeeper.

Two in two, as Boland has so often done. Early in the spell, as he has so often done. Wickets in bursts, as he has so often done. And justifying his selection, as he has done all but a couple of times in this arena, a sample size that has now reached 20 Tests, past the cut-off for what is broadly considered a career of substance. This is the difficulty and the opportunity facing Australia. On the one hand, their fourth quick now has 84 wickets that cost 18.2 runs apiece, and came once every 38.2 balls. There are five bowlers ever with more wickets at a better average, and one bowler with that many at a better strike rate, and none of them played after 1914.

On the other, picking him here, as it was in Brisbane in the last Australian season, and as it was in Jamaica in 2025, means leaving out their premier spinner, a veteran of 144 Tests and 573 wickets to date. Three times in the last eight matches for which he’s been fit, Nathan Lyon has not been used. Omitting specialist spin is almost an offence against principle, beyond the specifics of the situation. But when Australia’s four best fast bowlers are available, it’s hard to argue for leaving any of them unused. And when a Test is reduced, like this one, to less than four days, with dampness in the wicket, the need for spin contracts along with it.

Boland will have heavier work to do in the months ahead, as the schedule crunch is felt. He will have more work to do in the four Test days ahead. For now, though, with South Africa already behind the game despite their brief time at combat, he has once again justified his place. A player who makes things happen is what every team desires. On that front, he is undeniable.