🔗 Share this article

The Ashes may offer a reason to cheer, but this contest will also see the Australian team host a greater number of birthdays than Timezone in the 90s. New boy Jake Weatherald celebrated his 31st a day prior to the squad was announced. Nathan Lyon turns 38 the day preceding the Perth Test. Beau Webster turns 32 just before Brisbane, Usman Khawaja will be 39 on the second day in Adelaide, Josh Hazlewood becomes 35 on the final day in Sydney, and Mitchell Starc will be 36 before January is out.

Older Squad Interest Builds

For two or three years there has been growing fascination with the average age of this team and particularly the bowling unit. It is unusual to have almost every player near a Test team being above thirty, aside from young mascot Cameron Green and custody-weekend visitor Sam Konstas. But it wasn't necessarily true that older age was a disadvantage: a Test team boasting a four-man attack with 1,568 wickets between them is hardly a disadvantage, and it stands to reason 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 talking point is that the reserve players over that time, Scott Boland and Michael Neser, are also deep into their thirties. Younger bowlers have briefly joined squads – Lance Morris, Jhye Richardson – before disappearing for years with injury, meaning there has been no obvious replacement plan.

Change Forced by Injuries

So far, that hasn't been an issue, as the core four plus Boland have continued performing. Any side knows that having a batch of same-generation players might mean a group of simultaneous departures, but so far change has remained hypothetical: a process that would certainly be coming round the mountain when she comes, but one that hadn’t yet become visible.

Now, suddenly, change is here, forced upon this Aussie team in the space of a few weeks. The back injury to Pat Cummins was greeted with equanimity: he would likely only miss the opening match, was the team management assessment, and as the first-change bowler behind Starc and Hazlewood, he could comfortably be covered for by Boland.

But now that Hazlewood has been sidelined with a hamstring injury, 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 tight-line right-armers give the balance and control that allows Starc’s left-arm pace and swing to be used more as a attacking option. Missing both of them means a fundamental shift in the balance of the side. Boland taking the new ball is nothing new in his first-class career, but he has been so successful in Test matches entering the attack after seven to eight overs of initial onslaught. Now he’ll probably have to be the opening bowler.

Newcomer Confronts Expectations

Behind him will come Brendan Doggett, who at thirty-one years of age himself isn't an intimidated youngster, but he might become an nervous thirty-one-year-old. A full stadium crowd, partly English, for the opening Test of a eagerly awaited Ashes series will not make for an easy debut, no matter how many media stories describe him as laid-back. He could be brought onto the ground on a sun lounger and still be nervous.

Sign up to our cricket newsletter

Who knows, it might all go swimmingly for this revamped bowling lineup. It might not. What is striking is how rapidly Australia have moved from the surety of Starc, Lyon, Cummins, Hazlewood to the unknown of Starc, Lyon, and others. It's unclear what new injuries the first Test may bring. Who knows whether Cummins will be good to go for Brisbane, and able to continue after Brisbane, given how tricky stress injuries can be. It's uncertain how long Hazlewood might be sidelined, with a history of getting injured early in tournaments and a history of minor injuries becoming longer layoffs.

Outlook Uncertain

The back half of the series may witness the main four bowlers reunited and all going well. Or it might experience transition beginning much earlier than the stretch goal of 2027 in the UK. Not through Neser, who is apparently next in line and could be a excellent pink-ball Brisbane option, but after that with options uncertain. Sean Abbott was in the initial squad, though he’s now also hurt and has not yet played a Test. Richardson has just had his injury-prone arm repaired, and this format is not the place for easing into one’s work. After them lies the real unknown, and amid it all a chance for the opposing side. You can hear that train a-coming, rolling round the corner, and the English team hasn't seen the success since they don’t know when.