🔗 Share this article

The Ashes may offer a reason to cheer, but this contest will also see the Aussie side host more birthday parties than Timezone in the nineties. New boy Jake Weatherald had his thirty-first birthday a day before the team was named. Nathan Lyon turns 38 the day preceding the Perth Test. Beau Webster turns 32 just ahead of the Brisbane match, 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.

Ageing Team Interest Grows

For two or three years there has been growing fascination with the age of this team and especially the bowling unit. It is rare to have nearly all player near a Test side being above thirty, except for young mascot Cameron Green and occasional visitor Sam Konstas. But it wasn't necessarily true that greater age was a disadvantage: a Test team boasting a four-man attack with 1,568 wickets between them is scarcely a weakness, and it stands to reason that all of those bowlers are well into their professional lives.

I can’t remember ever being so confident at the beginning of an Ashes tour | a former player

Perhaps what really highlighted the talking point is that the reserve players over that time, Scott Boland and Michael Neser, are also well into their 30s. Younger bowlers have floated into teams – Lance Morris, Jhye Richardson – before disappearing for years with injuries, meaning there has been no clear line of succession.

Change Imposed by Setbacks

So far, that hasn't been an issue, as the core four plus Boland have continued performing. Any team knows that having a group of same-generation players might mean a batch of similarly-timed retirements, but so far change has remained hypothetical: a process that would certainly be arriving the mountain when she comes, but one that had not become visible.

Now, abruptly, transition is upon them, imposed on this Australian squad in the span of a few weeks. The back injury to Pat Cummins was greeted with equanimity: he would probably only sit out the opening match, was the team management view, and as the first-change bowler behind Starc and Hazlewood, he could comfortably be replaced by Boland.

But now that Hazlewood has been sidelined with a hamstring strain, the balance undergoes a far greater shift with two players missing rather than one. Cummins and Hazlewood as the two tight-line right-armers give the balance and control 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 composition of the team. Boland handling the new ball is nothing new in his first-class career, but he has been so effective in Tests entering the attack after seven or eight overs of initial onslaught. Now he’ll likely have to be the opening bowler.

Debutant Confronts Expectations

Behind him will come Brendan Doggett, who at thirty-one years of age himself won’t be an intimidated youngster, but he might become an nervous thirty-one-year-old. A packed stadium, partly English, for the opening Test of a deliriously anticipated Ashes series will not make for an easy debut, no matter how many media stories portray him as relaxed. He could be wheeled onto the field on a banana lounge and still be anxious.

Register to our cricket newsletter

Who knows, it might all go swimmingly for this new attack. It might not. What is notable is how quickly Australia have transitioned from the surety of Starc, Lyon, Cummins, Hazlewood to the unknown of Starc, Lyon, mumble mumble. Who knows what further injuries the opening match may cause. Who knows whether Cummins will be fit for the Brisbane Test, and able to continue after Brisbane, given how tricky stress fractures can be. It's uncertain how long Hazlewood might be sidelined, with a history of getting injured early in series and a pattern of minor injuries becoming longer layoffs.

Outlook Uncertain

The latter part of the contest may witness the primary four bowlers reunited and all performing well. Or it might experience transition beginning much earlier than the stretch goal of 2027 in England. Not through Neser, who is apparently next in line and could be a great day-night Brisbane option, but after that with options uncertain. Sean Abbott was in the original team, though he’s now also hurt and has not yet played a Test. Richardson has just had his injury-prone arm repaired, and this level is no place for easing into one’s work. After them lies the real unknown, and amid it all a chance for the visiting team. You can hear that train a-coming, coming around the corner, and England hasn't seen the sunshine since they don’t know when.