LAHORE — As the sole contest between England and Australia before this winter’s Ashes, it’s tempting to suggest that Saturday’s Champions Trophy match between the teams might be an early marker for that blockbuster series Down Under.
Yet when it comes to getting a read on the upcoming Ashes, that Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc are all missing for this tournament is far more noteworthy than whatever happens at Gaddafi Stadium this weekend.
The absence of Australia’s so-called Big Three – aka the “Pace Cartel” – has certainly boosted England’s chances of getting their tournament off to a winning start here in Pakistan following a rough couple of weeks in India.
However, of more significance is that ageing fast-bowling trio’s ongoing unavailability and the question it naturally provokes – how many of these guys will actually make it to the Ashes?
With Starc 35, Hazlewood 34 and Cummins 32 by the time the Ashes start in Perth on 21 November, will any of them be able to make it through the whole series?
It’s a question worth asking, especially for England, considering these are three bowlers who have taken 264 Ashes wickets between them. And with this being the first major tournament all three have missed since 2011, there’s a dawning realisation within Australian cricket that the golden trio’s time might be at its end.
As Travis Head, Australia’s main threat with the bat in this Champions Trophy, said of Cummins, Hazlewood and Starc this week: “They’re not going to be around forever. This moment was always going to come.”
At this point, it’s worth noting exactly why each is currently out.
Starc is absent for unspecified personal reasons we assume have nothing to do with injury.
Cummins, especially as his country’s captain, and Hazlewood are more worrying from an Australian perspective. Both missed the recent tour of Sri Lanka, with Cricket Australia’s statement admitting they were in need of “an extended period of rehabilitation” from respective ankle and hip injuries.
Initially, the stated reason for Cummins missing the Sri Lanka tour was to stay home for the birth of his second child. His subsequent absence for the Champions Trophy makes clear that the ankle issue he’d been managing during the Australian summer is worse than first thought. Yet he’s still likely to be fit for the World Test Championship final against South Africa at Lord’s in June and the three-Test series in the West Indies that follows.
Having been pulled out of US Major League Cricket on Thursday despite having signed a four-year deal with San Francisco Unicorns, expect Cummins to also sidestep this year’s Indian Premier League (IPL).
Of the three, Hazlewood’s future is perhaps the most precarious. He played 10 successive Tests for his country from the 2023 Old Trafford Ashes match to the first game of the most recent Australian international summer against India in Perth last November.
But after sustaining a side strain during that series opener, he has played just one of the next six Tests, with a calf injury sustained on his comeback for the third Test against India in Brisbane ruling him out for the rest of the series and a subsequent hip issue seeing him miss the tour of Sri Lanka. That’s three injuries in two months.
To those on the outside, it looks like Hazlewood has broken down after being overworked. Indeed, there are worries that he might now be in the same condition he was in between 2021 and 2023 when he played just four Tests during a two-and-a-half year period.
That included the 2021-22 Ashes, when he was not seen again after going down with a side strain during the first Test of the series in Brisbane. One warning to England, though, might be that they were still hammered 4-0.
Back in December, Hazlewood’s travails led former Australia white-ball captain Aaron Finch to say: “He’s getting injured more and more regularly so that would be a real concern. I think there’s an opportunity to maybe even cherry pick the games he plays in the future.
“Everyone knows he’s in that best three bowlers in Australia, or best four adding Nathan Lyon, but you need him on the park. So, Australia might have to consider picking the best conditions for Josh Hazlewood to have an impact and rotate the rest around that.”
Callum Ferguson, another former Australia international, responded to Finch’s comments by adding: “It’s really important these next couple of years for the Australian cricket team with regards the fast-bowling cartel because they’re not spring chickens anymore.”
For those who love the game, it would be a fitting end to see Hazlewood, Starc and Cummins have one last Ashes hurrah together on home turf next winter.
England fans might disagree, yet the chances of all three playing the majority of those five Tests look remote at this stage.
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