🔗 Share this article The Australian Team Begin The Ashes Series with Transition Abruptly Imposed on an Older Team The Ashes may offer a reason to cheer, but this contest will also witness the Australian team host a greater number of birthdays than an arcade in the nineties. New boy Jake Weatherald had his thirty-first birthday a day prior to the squad was announced. Nathan Lyon celebrates 38 the day before the Test in Perth. Beau Webster reaches 32 just before Brisbane, Usman Khawaja will be 39 on day two in Adelaide, Josh Hazlewood becomes 35 on the final day in Sydney, and Mitchell Starc will be 36 before January is over. Older Team Interest Builds For two or three years there has been growing curiosity with the average age of this side and especially the bowling attack. It is rare to have nearly all player near a Test side being above thirty, aside from young mascot Cameron Green and occasional visitor Sam Konstas. But it didn’t logically follow that greater age was a disadvantage: a Test squad boasting a four-man attack with 1,568 wickets between them is hardly a disadvantage, and it makes sense that all of those bowlers are deep into their careers. I can’t remember ever being so confident at the beginning of an Ashes tour | a former player Perhaps what most amplified the talking point is that the backup bowlers over that period, Scott Boland and Michael Neser, are also deep into their 30s. Younger bowlers have floated into squads – Lance Morris, Jhye Richardson – before disappearing for years with injuries, meaning there has been no obvious replacement plan. Transition Forced by Injuries So far, that hasn't been an issue, as the core four plus Boland have kept on backing up. Any team knows that having a group of similarly-aged players might mean a group of simultaneous retirements, but so far transition has remained theoretical: a process that would indeed be arriving the mountain when she comes, but one that hadn’t yet become visible. Now, suddenly, change is upon them, forced upon this Aussie team in the span of a few weeks. The back injury to Pat Cummins was greeted with equanimity: he would probably only miss the opening match, was the team management assessment, and as the first bowling change behind Starc and Hazlewood, he could easily be covered for by Boland. Mitchell Starc and Brendan Doggett during a net session in Western Australia in the build up to the first Test. Photograph: AAP But now that Hazlewood has been sidelined with a hamstring injury, the team balance experiences a much more significant shift with two players absent rather than one. Cummins and Hazlewood as the two tight-line right-armers give the stability and precision that enables 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 balance of the side. Boland taking the new ball is nothing new in his domestic career, but he has been so successful in Test matches entering the attack after seven to eight overs of early pressure. Now he’ll likely have to be the man up front. Debutant Confronts Expectations Behind him will come Brendan Doggett, who at 31 years old himself isn't an intimidated youngster, but he might become an nervous thirty-one-year-old. A packed stadium, partly English, for the first Test of a deliriously anticipated Ashes series will not make for an easy debut, no matter how many newspaper profiles portray him as laid-back. He could be brought onto the field on a banana lounge and still be nervous. Register to The Spin Who knows, it might all go swimmingly for this revamped bowling lineup. It might not work out. What is notable is how rapidly Australia have moved from the surety of Starc, Lyon, Cummins, Hazlewood to the uncertainty of Starc, Lyon, and others. It's unclear what further injuries the opening match may bring. It's unknown whether Cummins will be good to go for the Brisbane Test, and able to continue after that match, given how complicated stress injuries can be. Who knows how long Hazlewood might be out, with a track record of going down early in series and a pattern of initially small injuries becoming longer layoffs. Outlook Unclear The back half of the series may witness the main four bowlers reunited and all going well. Or it might see transition beginning much earlier than the stretch goal of 2027 in the UK. Not through Neser, who is seemingly the next option and could be a great pink-ball Brisbane option, but beyond that with options unclear. Sean Abbott was in the original team, though he’s now also hurt and has never played a Test match. Richardson has just had his crash-test-dummy arm put back on, and this level is no place for gradually starting one’s work. After them lies the real unknown, and throughout it opportunity for the visiting team. You can hear that train a-coming, rolling round the corner, and the English team ain’t seen the success since they don’t know when.