NEWS
Follow UsAustralia’s cult hero Scott Boland, on January 3 (Friday), dismissed Virat Kohli for the fourth time in Test cricket at the Sydney Cricket Ground. It was a typical Kohli dismissal, with the 36-year-old nicking an outside off delivery behind the stumps on day one of the fifth Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
In the ongoing series between India and Australia, Kohli has been dismissed seven times, all due to him edging a delivery either to the wicketkeeper or the slip cordon. The right-hander averages just 8 against Boland, and his overall numbers in the last 5-6 years have also been very mediocre.
Even in the first innings on a difficult SCG surface, Kohli left a lot of deliveries in his 69-ball 17 before running out of patience and making an error that he makes in every innings. Kohli scored a hundred in the second innings of the first Test but apart from that, the senior batter has only managed 84 runs in seven innings in the BGT 2024-25.
"We've got pretty set plans on how we want to bowl to him. He sort of feels like he leaves a lot, and then he wants to play the ball once he gets in. So once he gets in, we just want to switch our lines a little bit to fifth stump and it's working at the moment,” Boland said on Fox Cricket.
Talking about Boland, who registered figures of 4/31 in 20 overs on day one, debutant Beau Webster said: "If there's anything in the wicket he finds it, and if there's nothing in the wicket he still manages to find a way through.
“He's relentless. Think it's his line and length and his natural angle makes it really hard for right-handers, but when we see him go around the wicket to left-handers, it's impressive stuff."
There was also a lot of drama in the last over of day one, with Jasprit Bumrah and Sam Konstas getting involved in a heated argument. Initially, Bumrah was upset that the striker Khawaja was deliberately delaying proceedings to take time away from the day. But the Indian skipper got furious when Konstas intervened and told Bumrah to ‘wait’ as Khawaja was not ready.
Konstas’ words incited a reaction from the Indian skipper, and the pair had a mini-go at each other. The next ball bowled by Bumrah was let go by Khawaja; it was wide outside off-stump and harmless.
By this point, enough time had been wasted, which meant that the next ball would be the day's final ball. The tension built up, and bang, on the very final delivery of the day, Bumrah had Khawaja caught at slip to help India finish the day on a high.
But it’s what happened after the dismissal that proved to be the highlight. Once Rahul completed the catch, Bumrah stormed towards the direction of the non-striker Konstas and gave him a death stare. Soon, the entire Indian side marched towards the young opener and celebrated loudly and aggressively, almost to send a message.
“I’m not really sure (what happened), it’s an interesting one. (Sam’s) a very confident young man, and that’s what they do these days these youngsters, they get after it. He’s got all the skills and all the talented to back it up, so hopefully has a really good day tomorrow and puts a few runs on the board,” said Webster.
