There are batsmen like Boycott, Kirsten, Kallis, Atherton and so on who mostly play(ed) slowly and carefully and don't usually get the pulse racing, but who are or were extremely capable of dismantling an attack with glorious shots if the occasion warranted it, in their view. That their view of when it was warranted might be a rather pessimistic one is probably inarguable, but they were out in the middle and we weren't. But I've seen all of them do it. The other point in their favour is that they do their job with consummate skill.
So I would look elsewhere for excruciating dullness, at players who not only don't do very much of interest, but seem incapable of doing anything else, even when the game situation demands something else.
Top of my list of players to avoid seeing at all costs was Tim Curtis. I do not believe he ever played an attacking shot in his entire career. Unlike a Boycott, who would efficiently and mercilessly dispatch bad balls to the boundary with clinical strokes, Curtis would simply pat them back to the bowler. (This is not to be confused with the approach of George Gunn, who also regularly patted bad balls back to the bowler, but made up for it by hitting the good balls for four or six. He just found it more interesting that way.)
But as usual, a discussion of dull players has focused on batsmen. I don't usually find batsmen boring. It's bowlers who have me catching up on the z's.
Mediocre English seam bowlers, mostly, although a few overseas ones have also unimpressed.
People like Peter Martin, Neil Foster, Mark Ilott, Paul Taylor and Mike Hendrick.
My current unfavourite, though, is Pollock: Durban was something of an exception in the way he's played these last few years in that he actually attacked the stumps and tried to get batsmen out when his usual practice is to bowl way wide of off stump and get maidens rather than wickets. And I don't really see what's so admirable about that, especially as it isn't actually helping South Africa win many matches nowadays.
Cheers,
Mike