Boland’s Bombs
David Bedingham is doing the balcony lean; his head is almost down on his shoulder as he watches the many replays of his golden duck. The TV cameras show where it pitched, the grip, the line, and his head position — on repeat.
Bedingham made errors; he wanted to hit the ball, so he chased it, walked across the stumps and not down the wicket, and he got an outside edge.
The part of this not yet mentioned is that he was facing Scott Boland.
And facing the Aussie seamer on a pitch like the one at Gqeberha for the second South Africa-Australia Test is like disarming a bomb in 0.2 seconds.
It is going to move in both directions; he drops his head and bowls over the top, meaning the ball comes from a weird angle. He is fast enough to rush you and even hit the bat hard. And he never misses. He is just there the entire time.
So Bedingham’s job is disarm a Boland ball, almost every time.
