Victoria's crushing three-day Sheffield Shield win over Western Australia might have unearthed a new candidate to replace injured Test star Mitchell Starc.
The Bushrangers dominated virtually the entire match, winning by 356 runs thanks largely to a career-best 7-31 from right-hand quick Scott Boland on Sunday as the Warriors were skittled for 102.
All eyes were initially on Test 12th man James Pattinson as he joined Victoria and bowled well, taking 2-31 from eight second innings overs but Boland was the star.
After top-order batsmen Marcus Stoinis (101 and 75) and Peter Handscomb (98 and 63) helped Victoria twice post 322 and set WA 459 to win, the Warriors never looked likely.
Boland settled in from the Lillee-Marsh end and was devastatingly sharp and straight, reducing WA to their lowest ever fourth innings total in Perth against Victoria.
The 26-year-old has 12 wickets in two games this Shield season and enjoyed the extra life in the WACA deck.
"It's good to bowl on a wicket with really nice carry and a little bit of seam. It's a bit different from the MCG that I'm used to," he said.
"It's good to come out here as a team and I thought we bowled really well the whole game and didn't give them an opportunity to get back into it."
WA captain Michael Klinger was struggling for any positives from the home team's perspective aside from the debut of left-arm paceman Joel Paris who finished with 6-120.
"It wasn't a great three days. That was a really poor batting performance obviously but if you look at the full three days, we got completely beaten in all facets of the game," Klinger said.
"As a bowling group we weren't able to build pressure. We only had one or two guys bowling well throughout and others letting pressure off.
"Then to score 180-odd and just over 100 is well below the standards we set ourselves."
Klinger couldn't have been more impressed with Boland though.
"Boland has been the best bowler in both games we've played against them," he said.
"He's had a very good couple of years so with a Test bowling spot up for grabs, for mine he's the next best bowler in Shield cricket who is available and playing."
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