Scotty and friends have plan to wrangle Bazball blitz

Australian fast bowler Scott Boland has a plan to counter England’s ‘Bazball’ approach in the upcoming Ashes series and says adversary Stuart Broad has given him inspiration about how to approach his task.

This will be the 34-year-old’s first Ashes tour after a stellar start to his seven-Test career.

Boland has taken 28 Test wickets at an average of 13.42 and concedes a miserly 2.18 runs per over. England are well aware of the threat he poses after Boland stunned them with a spell of 6-7 on debut at the MCG on their last tour of Australia.

When he does get to play in the Ashes series, Boland is expecting the aggressive England batters to come after him to try and get him to alter his own plans and throw him off his game.

“I think it is going to be very interesting to see how it all plays out but I am not going to change too much from what I have done in the past,” Boland told AAP.

“I am still going to try and bowl the majority of balls in the same spot and try and get movement off the pitch.

“It might be that the fields are slightly different to what you see in Australia over summers gone by. That might be the biggest adjustment to the bowling group, but when we get to the first Ashes Test we will all have our plans in place for each batter.”

England pacemen Broad is the bowler Boland has watched closely in his own conditions.

“I am a similar bowler to Broad who doesn’t try and swing the ball as much. We are both trying to seam the ball and bowl wobble seam,” he said.

“I take learnings away from watching him. When they have England on Sky Sports and show the slow-mos of how Broad is releasing the ball and how the ball comes out of the hand I pick up little tips and tricks out of that.

“I come around the wicket to left-handers straight away and he always goes around the wicket to our left-handers. Over the past few years I have tried to copy that.

“Earlier in my career I wasn’t as comfortable doing that … but now I am experienced enough that I can hit the right spot around the wicket straight away. They have (Ben) Duckett, (Ben) Stokes, Broad and (Jack) Leach in their Test side who are left-handers.”

Boland said he expected England to continue with their aggressive approach, but added there could be a scenario where they are faced with a dilemma.

“The most interesting thing might be if we are playing on a wicket that is a bit juicy and we have them 4-30, then the pressure will be on them to keep playing that same way,” Boland said.

“The way they are talking about how they intend to play, there is more pressure on them than there is on us to play our style.

“For us it is going to be about the bowlers communicating with the coaches off the field and Pat (Cummins) on the field to see how we are best going to take a wicket.

“If the wicket is flat and not conducive to taking wickets regularly then it will be about how we slow their scoring to then get a wicket.”