Why shorter Tests mean a longer spell at top for Australia’s attack
By Malcolm Conn
Pat Cummins has the numbers to prove that his unrelenting Australian Test attack is on course to march ever deeper into history.
It’s not his super strike rate (the best of any modern Australian bowler), or his average (second only to Glenn McGrath’s in that hallowed pantheon), but the number of overs he and his cohorts are no longer forced to bowl.
Pat Cummins, Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc.Credit: Getty Images
Nathan Lyon, 36, Mitchell Starc, 34, Josh Hazlewood, 33, and Cummins, 30, did not play a five-day Test this summer. The Adelaide Test went for little more than two days. So while concerns were raised about Perth being dangerous, with batters being hit from the ball flying around off cracks in the pitch, Cummins could not have been happier after Australia’s 360-run win over Pakistan inside four days.
“We play on a lot of wickets where it’s really flat and it’s fill your boots as a batter,” said Cummins, who expressed similar sentiments about the well-grassed Adelaide pitch. “Here [in Perth], the second innings for both teams was more difficult than the first, but as you saw, there’s plenty of runs to be got out there. You’d be happy to bowl on that every week.”
He recalls the long grind Test cricket was earlier in his career compared to the fast-moving matches often played now. It’s a significant reason he says why the same attack has completed all five Tests this summer without missing a beat.
From the third Test of the 2019 Ashes to the last Test in Brisbane against India during early 2021 Cummins bowled 20 overs or more in 18 of 23 innings. In the 52 innings since, Cummins has bowled 20 overs or more just 16 times.
Should the quartet also play both Tests in New Zealand, beginning later this month, it will be the first time in a decade that an Australian attack has played seven Tests in a row.
Lyon was part of that line-up, when he teamed with Ryan Harris, Mitchell Johnson and Peter Siddle for all five Tests of the 2013-14 Ashes and the first two Tests of the following South African tour.
Lyon, who has 517 wickets, insisted there is “no end in sight” for the current bowlers. Starc has 353 wickets while Hazlewood and Cummins each have 263, putting all four in Australia’s top 10 most successful bowlers of all time.
“We’ve not spoken about it at all,” Lyon said of retirement.
Lyon would have more wickets but for a serious calf injury suffered during the second Ashes Test in England last year, which ruled him out for the remainder of the series.
“I was sitting at home with [wife] Emma watching the NRL and AFL grand finals and I said to Em ‘there was no way I was going to give this [Test cricket] up’,” Lyon said.
“The injury has allowed me to reset some goals and the hunger level for me not being able to bowl for 10 weeks during rehab and then 16 weeks before playing lit the fire in the belly and the hunger for me to go bigger and better.”
Cricket Australia operations manager Peter Roach said CA had been working closely with curators to enhance the “traditional characteristics” of their pitches. This includes Sydney reverting back to a spinning pitch.
Hazlewood says it’s a love of Test cricket that keeps driving the bowlers on.
“You try to hang onto Test cricket as long as possible,” Hazlewood told this masthead after becoming the fourth member of the group to claim 250 wickets. “It’d be great if we could play forever, but if we could play a couple more years … what we know about training and workload management now we might be able to hang on longer.”
Hazlewood highlighted England opening bowler Jimmy Anderson as an inspiration. He is still playing aged 41.
The current attack is the only quartet to have played in the same Test with 250 wickets each. Hazlewood was the last to reach the milestone on the way to his best Test figures of 9-79 in the recent first Test against the West Indies at Adelaide Oval. He also became the last of them to claim 100 wickets in the 28 Tests they have played together, another first.
News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter