🔗 Share this article

The historic Ashes series could provide a reason to cheer, but this series will also witness the Australian team host a greater number of birthdays than Timezone in the 90s. Recent addition Jake Weatherald celebrated his thirty-first birthday a day before the team was announced. Nathan Lyon celebrates 38 the day preceding the Perth Test. Beau Webster reaches 32 just ahead of Brisbane, Usman Khawaja will be 39 on day two in Adelaide, Josh Hazlewood becomes 35 on the fifth day in Sydney, and Mitchell Starc will be 36 by the time January is out.

Older Team Fascination Builds

For a couple of years there has been mounting curiosity with the average age of this team and especially the bowling unit. It is unusual to have nearly all player near a Test side being over 30, except for novelty-sized mascot Cameron Green and occasional visitor Sam Konstas. But it wasn't necessarily true that older age was a problem: a Test team featuring a four-man attack with 1,568 wickets between them is scarcely a weakness, and it makes sense that all of those bowlers are deep into their professional lives.

I can’t remember ever being so confident at the start of an Ashes tour | Mark Ramprakash

Perhaps what really highlighted the discussion is that the reserve players over that time, Scott Boland and Michael Neser, are also well into their 30s. Younger bowlers have briefly joined squads – Lance Morris, Jhye Richardson – before vanishing for years with injury, meaning there has been no obvious replacement plan.

Change Imposed by Injuries

So far, that hasn’t mattered, as the core four plus Boland have continued performing. Any side knows that having a batch of same-generation players might mean a batch of similarly-timed departures, but so far transition has remained hypothetical: a process that would certainly be coming round the bend when she comes, but one that had not steamed into view.

Now, suddenly, transition is here, forced upon this Australian squad in the span of a short period. The back injury to Pat Cummins was taken in stride: he would probably only miss the first Test, was the Cricket Australia assessment, and as the first-change bowler behind Starc and Hazlewood, he could easily be covered for by Boland.

But now that Hazlewood has been sidelined with a hamstring strain, the team balance undergoes a much more significant change with two key bowlers absent rather than a single one. Cummins and Hazlewood as the two accurate right-arm bowlers give the stability and precision that allows Starc’s left-arm speed and movement to be used more as a attacking option. Missing both of them means a major adjustment in the balance of the team. Boland taking the new ball is not unusual in his first-class career, but he has been so effective in Test matches coming on after seven or eight overs of early pressure. Now he’ll likely have to be the opening bowler.

Newcomer Faces Pressure

Behind him will come Brendan Doggett, who at thirty-one years of age himself won’t be an overawed youth, but he might become an overawed 31-year-old. A packed stadium, half of it English, for the first Test of a deliriously anticipated Ashes series will not make for an easy debut, no matter how many newspaper profiles describe him as relaxed. He could be brought onto the ground on a banana lounge and still be anxious.

Sign up to our cricket newsletter

It's uncertain, it might all go swimmingly for this new attack. It might not. What is notable is how quickly Australia have moved from the certainty of Starc, Lyon, Cummins, Hazlewood to the unknown of Starc, Lyon, and others. It's unclear what new injuries the first Test may cause. Who knows whether Cummins will be fit for Brisbane, and able to continue after that match, given how complicated stress injuries can be. It's uncertain how long Hazlewood might be sidelined, with a track record of getting injured early in tournaments and a pattern of minor injuries becoming extended absences.

Future Uncertain

The back half of the contest may see the primary four bowlers reunited and all going well. Or it might see transition beginning much earlier than the stretch goal of 2027 in England. Not through Neser, who is apparently the next option and could be a great pink-ball Brisbane option, but beyond that with choices uncertain. Sean Abbott was in the initial squad, though he’s now also injured and has never played a Test. Richardson has just had his injury-prone arm put back on, and this level is no place for gradually starting one’s work. Beyond them lies the true uncertainty, and throughout it opportunity for the visiting team. You can hear that train a-coming, coming around the bend, and England ain’t seen the sunshine since they can't recall when.