The Australian Team Enter The Ashes Campaign with Change Abruptly Forced Upon an Older Squad

The Ashes may offer a reason to cheer, but this contest will also see the Aussie side host a greater number of birthdays than an arcade in the nineties. New boy Jake Weatherald celebrated his thirty-first birthday a day prior to the team was announced. Nathan Lyon turns 38 the day before the Test in Perth. Beau Webster reaches 32 just ahead of the Brisbane match, 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 over.

Older Team Interest Grows

For a couple of years there has been growing fascination with the average age of this side and particularly the bowling unit. It is rare to have almost every player near a Test team 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 squad boasting a four-bowler lineup with over 1,500 wickets between them is hardly a weakness, and it stands to reason that all of those bowlers are well into their professional lives.

I've never felt this sure at the start of an Ashes tour | Mark Ramprakash

Perhaps what most amplified 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 floated into teams – Lance Morris, Jhye Richardson – before vanishing for years with injuries, meaning there has been no clear line of succession.

Change Forced by Setbacks

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 group of simultaneous departures, but so far transition 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, abruptly, change is here, forced upon this Aussie team in the space of a short period. The spinal issue to Pat Cummins was greeted with equanimity: he would likely only miss the opening match, was the team management view, and as the first-change bowler behind Starc and Hazlewood, he could easily be replaced by Boland.

But now that Hazlewood has gone down with a hamstring strain, the balance experiences a much more significant shift with two key bowlers absent rather than one. Cummins and Hazlewood as the two accurate right-arm bowlers give the stability and precision that enables Starc’s left-arm pace and swing to be used more as a weapon of attack. Losing both of them means a major adjustment in the balance of the side. Boland taking the new ball is not unusual in his domestic career, but he has been so successful in Tests coming on after seven or eight overs of initial onslaught. Now he’ll probably have to be the man up front.

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 nervous thirty-one-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 laid-back. He could be wheeled onto the field on a sun lounger and still be anxious.

Register to our cricket newsletter

It's uncertain, it might all go swimmingly for this new attack. It might not. What is striking is how rapidly Australia have moved from the certainty of Starc, Lyon, Cummins, Hazlewood to the uncertainty of Starc, Lyon, and others. It's unclear what further injuries the opening match may bring. Who knows whether Cummins will be good to go for the Brisbane Test, and able to continue after Brisbane, given how tricky stress fractures can be. Who knows how long Hazlewood might be sidelined, with a track record of going down early in series and a pattern of minor injuries becoming longer layoffs.

Future Unclear

The latter part of the contest may witness the main four bowlers reunited and all going well. Or it might see transition beginning much earlier than the long-term aim of 2027 in the UK. Not through Neser, who is apparently the next option and could be a great pink-ball Brisbane option, but beyond that with choices unclear. Sean Abbott was in the initial squad, though he’s now also hurt and has not yet played a Test match. Richardson has just had his crash-test-dummy arm put back on, and this level is not the place for easing into one’s work. Beyond 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 bend, and the English team hasn't seen the sunshine since they don’t know when.