On Friday afternoon at Perth, two Australian fast bowlers marked out their run-ups beneath the Ashes branding, that familiar union of flags and history and self-importance.
One was Scott Boland, cult hero of the MCG, broad shoulders settling into a rhythm English batters know too well.
The other was Brendan Doggett, leaner, less famous, a former carpenter who once thought country cricket and a nail bag were as far as life would take him.
They were not sharing the new ball. But they were sharing something far more consequential.
For the first time in nearly 150 years of men’s Test cricket, Australia has picked two indigenous men in the same Test XI.
Doggett becomes only the third indigenous male to play Tests for Australia, after Jason Gillespie and Boland, and the fifth indigenous Australian when you include Faith Thomas and Ashleigh Gardner.
On paper, it looked like a routine selection call. Out on the field, it was a moment that has been a long time coming.
The apprentice with a nail gun and a half-forgotten history
Doggett’s story does not begin in an academy or a private-school first XI.
He grew up around Toowoomba in regional Queensland, where Aboriginal kids with sporting talent are usually pushed towards rugby league, not red-ball cricket.
His early twenties were spent on building sites, working as an apprentice carpenter, playing country cricket on weekends.
By the time Queensland noticed the wiry quick and brought him into their system, Doggett was already older than most academy prospects and kept bouncing between domestic contracts.
The twist came late. Over the last couple of seasons, Doggett’s numbers hardened: heavy overs, movement with the new ball, and then the performance that changed everything. He took 11 wickets in a Sheffield Shield final, dragging South Australia to their first title in 29 years.
On merit alone, he barged his way into the selection conversation.
Becoming Indigenous, publicly
Doggett’s family background traces back to one of Australia’s many indigenous communities, whose histories stretch far deeper than the modern nation but are rarely mentioned in cricketing circles.
His connection comes from his mother’s side, rooted in the coastal region around Newcastle in New South Wales.
For many indigenous Australians of his generation, that identity is not something announced with a school ceremony or documented in family albums.
In Doggett’s case, he has said he only began to understand, and then embrace, this part of his heritage in his twenties — long after he had entered professional dressing rooms.
And that “late discovery” is not unusual.
Boland, the other indigenous fast bowler in this Test XI, learnt about his Aboriginal heritage from a community in south-west Victoria when he was already a grown man.
Jason Gillespie, the first indigenous Australian to become a regular in the Test side, has spent years explaining why players like him often grew up unaware, or unsure, of their own roots.
This silence didn’t happen by accident. For decades, government policies and social pressure pushed many indigenous families to hide or downplay their identity.
Cricket, a sport that prides itself on tradition, did little to change that; indigenous players were visible only as exceptions, never as part of the game’s centre.
A partnership 150 years in the making
Doggett and Boland sharing a new ball is not just a modern milestone; it is also a belated answer to an old question.
In 1868, 23 years before the first officially recognised Ashes Test, an Aboriginal XI sailed to England. Their star, Johnny Mullagh, scored 1,698 runs and took 245 wickets on the tour, thrilling English crowds and confounding the assumptions of the era.
The British press responded with a queasy mix of admiration and racism, marvelling at their skill while calling them “the conquered natives of a convict colony”.
Back home, colonial policy, including restrictions on travel from missions, effectively shut the door that Mullagh and his team-mates had tried to prise. Indigenous cricketers were pushed back to the margins.
Fast-forward a century and a half.
Cricket Australia now awards the Johnny Mullagh Medal at the Boxing Day Test, a trophy Scott Boland made famous with his six-wicket blitz against England in 2021.
Yet, even as Mullagh’s story is being recovered and polished for ceremony, the numbers remain stark: across formats, only a handful of Indigenous Australians have represented their country.
So when Boland and Doggett run in together in Perth, it is hard not to see them as the long-delayed continuation of a team that boarded a ship in 1868 and never saw their revolution completed.
Is this a turning point or a tidy photo op?
Cricket Australia and the players’ association now both have Reconciliation Action Plans that go beyond the corporate wallpaper.
They talk about racism, acknowledge that the game has “lost players altogether” through exclusion, and promise more indigenous representation across governance, coaching and elite pathways.
There are National Indigenous Cricket Championships in Alice Springs, Indigenous men’s and women’s XIs retracing the 1868 tour route to England, partnerships with NITV to broadcast finals.
And yet. For all the glossy strategies and murals on stadium walls, it has still taken until the mid-2020s for Australia to field two indigenous men in a Test XI, and only three Indigenous male Test cricketers in history.
So Doggett and Boland’s partnership should be seen for what it is: proof of concept, not proof of completion.
They demonstrate that when the pathways work, when selection is open, when support extends beyond lip service, indigenous quicks can not only survive but thrive in cricket’s most traditional format.
The carpenter, the cult hero and the kids watching
One of the small joys in the Doggett story is how ordinary it sounds.
He still has carpenter friends in Toowoomba sending him messages, the kind that begin with disbelief and end with pride.
He still remembers the early mornings on sites, when cricket felt like a weekend release rather than a career.
Boland, for his part, still talks with disarming simplicity about his own role. Before the Perth Test he said he hoped that kids in indigenous communities would “see two guys playing and then hopefully they want to take that step into playing cricket”.
It is a modest hope, but also an indictment.
Because for most of Australian cricket’s history, there were zero indigenous fast bowlers for those kids to see in a baggy green. For long stretches, there were zero indigenous players at all.
That is where the century-old promise sits.
For now, two fast bowlers are running in together, a Worimi man and a Gulidjan man sharing an old new ball in a very old series. The pictures will look good on the highlights packages.