If the stress fractures in Pat Cummins’ back don’t cause the national selectors to finally start planning for the future, then nothing will.
The skipper now looks like he will not only miss the Ashes opener but probably the first three Tests and perhaps the entire series after scans showed his injured back is taking longer than expected/hoped to heal.
His looming absence underlines how ill prepared the Australian Test team is for the next few years when their quartet of all-time great bowlers will need to be replaced.
Mitchell Starc has recently announced he has dropped international T20s from his workload to prolong his red-ball career while Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon are focused on the next World Test Championship cycle which precedes the 2027 Ashes Tour.
All four bowlers have earned the right to keep going until they see fit to call it a day and Cummins, 32 – who is a few years younger than Starc (35), Hazelwood (34) and Lyon (37) – will presumably be around as the senior pro even if he drops the captaincy when his three comrades have quit.
Lyon, who has not played in the short formats at international level since 2019, has declared he wants to bow out after the next Ashes tour where the Aussies have unfinished business after only drawing the past two series while retaining the urn.
With Cummins all but certain to miss next month’s Ashes opener against England in Perth, then 36-year-old Scott Boland is the obvious replacement after his hat-trick when called in for the final Test of the Caribbean tour at Jamaica in July.
But after that, the fast bowling stocks are looking decidedly thin.
Lance Morris has already been ruled out for the summer, Spencer Johnson until Christmas and young gun Callum Vidler is also sidelined by back injuries while the luckless Jhye Richardson (shoulder) is also in the casualty ward.
Richardson’s absence means there is just one measly seamer in the entire Sheffield Shield ranks with Test experience, Queensland veteran Michael Neser, who played the last of his two matches three years ago.
Pat Cummins. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
At 35, he is ever reliable and could potentially file a role but selecting him would hardly be an investment in the future.
The Australian selectors, as they have done with the batting, have failed to future-proof the team by giving precisely zero chances to any younger fast bowlers who could form the nucleus of the post-Cummins-Starc-Hazlewood era.
Queensland 31-year-old Brendan Doggett, who was part of the World Test Championship squad in June before injury ruled him out of the Caribbean tour, missed the opening Shield round due to a hamstring injury but is expected to be back in action next week for the Adelaide Oval clash with South Australia.
Sean Abbott, who was part of the squad in the Windies after Doggett was dogged by a hip injury, is another seamer who could be in the mix for an Ashes call-up but the white-ball specialist, with 56 limited-overs internationals under his belt, is entering the twilight of his career at 33.
Western Australian left-armer Joel Paris has done the hard yards on the domestic circuit for more than a decade, bagging 28 scalps last season at 16.53 from seven matches, and he could have been an option if Starc was unavailable but he tore a hamstring in the Shield opener against NSW.
Victoria’s Fergus O’Neill, a relative infant compared to most other contenders at 24, enjoyed a breakout season with 38 wickets at 21.07 last season to trail only South Australia’s Mr Consistency, Nathan McAndrew (40 at 20.2) on the Shield wicket takers list.
Joel Paris. (Photo by Mark Brake/Getty Images)
O’Neill went wicketless in the Shield draw with South Australia but could emerge from the pack if the selectors decide the time has finally come to blood a fresh face or two.
The best of the rest option looks to be Queensland’s Xavier Bartlett, who missed the start of the Shield season for the oh so important three-match T20 series last week that has already been forgotten on both sides of the Tasman.
At 26, he is shaping as a long-term building block for Australia’s next gen of pace bowlers.
On the other side of the Ashes fence, England have concerns over Ben Stokes’ shoulder injury but their pace spearheads Jofra Archer and Mark Wood should be firing on all cylinders by the time the series kicks off in Perth.
Unlike Australia’s regimented devotion to their established bowlers, England have strategically introduced an armada of quicks to Test cricket in recent years, well before Stuart Broad and James Anderson retired.
They have been able to settle on players with pace who have the potential to trouble the Australian batters Down Under in Brydon Carse, Josh Tongue, Gus Atkinson and Matthew Potts.
It will be a surprise if any of the England seamers play more than three Tests as Brendon McCullum rotates his bullpen baseball/Bazball style.
If Cummins is forced out for the entire summer, Australia’s hopes rest on four bowlers in their mid to late 30s getting through a gruelling five-match campaign over the course of seven weeks.
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