Scott Boland‘s maiden Test could have hardly gone any better, claiming an astonishing six-wicket haul in front of his home crowd, playing his part in Australia’s mammoth innings victory over England that sealed the 2021/22 Ashes with a 3-0 series lead.

The 32-year-old Boland, who has picked up 279 wickets in 80 first-class games, received his Baggy Green ahead of the third Test at the MCG, adding to his 14 ODIs and 3 T20Is, all played in 2016. Boland picked up a solitary wicket in England’s 185-run total in the first innings, but tore through the side in the second, landing remarkable figures of 4-1-7-6.

An Australian Test debutant has taken six wickets in an innings on 15 occasions, but Boland’s is the cheapest of them all. It’s also the first time that an Australian debutant has taken six or more wickets in an innings since skipper Pat Cummins took one almost exactly a decade ago, and only the third time it has happened this century.

In fact, Boland’s six-wicket haul is the joint second-most economical ever, bettered only by Jermaine Lawson’s figures of 6-3 against Bangladesh in 2002.

It also took him just 19 deliveries to claim a five-for, the joint-quickest five-wicket haul in Test history (alongside Stuart Broad and Ernie Toshack. Boland’s also the only one to have claimed six wickets inside four overs in a completed Test spell.

In the Ashes, Boland’s 6-7 is the best by a Test debutant since Bob Massie’s double eight-wicket haul at Lord’s in 1972, and the only six-wicket Ashes haul in a maiden Test this century.

It might just be the start, but to put his achievement in context, among all Test bowlers with a minimum of seven wickets, Boland’s current Test average of 7.86 is the best ever. His strike-rate of 14.5 is also the best ever by a bowler.

It’s also the cheapest five-wicket haul ever taken in the Ashes, beating Ian Botham’s economical figures of 5-11 from the 1981 Birmingham Test.

Overall, it was England’s ninth defeat in Tests in 2021, the joint-most by a team in a single calendar year alongside Bangladesh’s tally in 2003.

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