Boland and Neser prove pace race was all hot air

Australian cricket lost me some time ago. Not cricket itself. I have been in love with the game for years and will hold that affection until the end of my days. Australian cricket lost me though.

The funny thing is that it was not when you would have thought it was, on that cloudy day in Cape Town in 2018. It was some months before that during an Ashes series when the national coach expressed to the country an obsession with pace.

There is a lot to like about what Darren Lehmann did for Australian cricket.

He was a key part of an exceptional Test side around the turn of the century and was a fine batter. He seemed a players player, a cricketers cricketer, which was something you could easily get behind. As a coach he obviously did a lot of good as well, but he lost me.

It was not just Lehmann I am sure, but he was the mouthpiece for an approach during his tenure that was obsessed with pace.

Numerous times he would front the media and explain how he would only pick bowlers who bowled at a certain speed.

The coach believed that air speed was necessary to get good batters out, especially in Australia. This was a hugely frustrating statement.

The thing about cricket, especially Australian cricket, was that for a long time it was the game that everyone and anyone could play. You did not have to be an athletic machine or blessed with supreme coordination to dream of one day playing at the Boxing Day Test.

Do not get me wrong, I know that it helps if you are those things, but you did not have to be. Lehmann’s statement potentially crushed the dreams of thousands of cricketers across the country.

Not everyone can bowl wheels. Some have to bring skill, guile and smarts, which can be just as effective.

So that was when Australian cricket lost me, around the 2013 to 2014 Ashes. The fact is of course that such an approach is flawed in more ways than its heartbreaking potential. It pays little respect to very good bowlers who deserve a chance.

Chadd Sayers was the great example during this time. A fine new ball bowler at Shield level who played just one Test, the last one in 2018. That would have been an interesting environment to come into.

Back in the day Terry Alderman enjoyed success around Australia, even after his shoulder injury slowed him down. Damien Fleming was not super quick and had success as well. As the original cricket nerd, my frustration was palpable.

I was out in the wilderness for the best part of 10 years. The events of 2018 did not help my hopes of finding a reason to come back either. So for years I immersed myself in the Big Bash League and the Sheffield Shield, each season secretly hoping the tourists would do well so these Aussies could be taken down a peg or two.

Then, just like some old teenage flame who finds you single and alone as you edge toward your 50s, she started to lure me back.

Small things over recent years, a smile here and a comment there, slowly pulled me in again. Then it happened.

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With injuries striking some of the major bowlers going into the Ashes, the selectors warmed my heart with what they did. While I would have liked to see a spinner in every Test, maybe even two in Sydney, I loved the fact that the replacement quicks did so well.

I also loved that neither of them ever got close to bowling the 140 kilometres per hour that was so obsessed over all those years ago.

Scott Boland and Michael Neser come across as ripping fellas. Affable, selfless and hard working.

They were a key part of the way the Australian men’s cricket team went about their job this home summer.

They ran in hard, hit the seam time and again, attacked the stumps and reaped the rewards.

I watched as much of it as I possibly could. It was the most beautiful display of cricketing skill. I loved it and when it finished in Sydney just a couple of days ago, I knew I was back