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The historic Ashes series may offer one cause for celebration, but this contest will also witness the Australian team celebrate more birthday parties than Timezone in the 90s. New boy Jake Weatherald celebrated his 31st a day before the squad was named. Nathan Lyon turns 38 the day preceding the Test in Perth. Beau Webster turns 32 just before Brisbane, Usman Khawaja will be 39 on day two in Adelaide, Josh Hazlewood turns 35 on the fifth day in Sydney, and Mitchell Starc will be 36 before January is out.

Ageing Team Fascination Grows

For a couple of years there has been mounting fascination with the average age of this team and particularly the bowling unit. It is rare to have almost every player in a Test team being above thirty, except for young mascot Cameron Green and custody-weekend visitor Sam Konstas. But it wasn't necessarily true that greater age was a disadvantage: a Test team featuring a four-man attack with over 1,500 wickets between them is scarcely a weakness, and it makes sense that all of those bowlers are deep into their professional lives.

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Perhaps what really highlighted the talking point is that the reserve players over that period, Scott Boland and Michael Neser, are also well into their thirties. Emerging pacemen have briefly joined teams – Lance Morris, Jhye Richardson – before disappearing for years with injury, meaning there has been no obvious replacement plan.

Change Forced by Injuries

So far, that hasn't been an issue, as the core four plus Boland have kept on performing. Any team knows that having a batch of similarly-aged players might mean a group of simultaneous retirements, but so far transition has remained hypothetical: a train that would certainly be arriving the mountain when she comes, but one that hadn’t yet become visible.

Now, abruptly, change is here, forced upon this Australian squad in the span of a short period. The back injury to Pat Cummins was greeted with equanimity: he would probably only miss the first Test, was the Cricket Australia view, and as the first-change bowler behind Starc and Hazlewood, he could comfortably be covered for by Boland.

But now that Hazlewood has been sidelined with a hamstring injury, the team balance experiences a far greater change with two key bowlers missing rather than one. Cummins and Hazlewood as the two accurate right-arm bowlers give the balance and control that enables Starc’s left-arm pace and swing to be used more as a weapon of attack. Missing both of them means a fundamental shift in the composition of the team. Boland handling the new ball is nothing new in his domestic career, but he has been so effective in Tests coming on after seven or eight overs of early pressure. Now he’ll probably have to be the man up front.

Newcomer Confronts Expectations

Behind him will come Brendan Doggett, who at thirty-one years of age himself won’t be an overawed youth, but he might become an nervous thirty-one-year-old. A packed stadium, partly English, for the first Test of a eagerly awaited Ashes series will not make for an easy debut, no matter how many newspaper profiles portray him as relaxed. He could be brought onto the ground on a sun lounger and still be anxious.

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It's uncertain, it might all go swimmingly for this revamped bowling lineup. It might not. What is striking is how quickly Australia have transitioned from the surety of Starc, Lyon, Cummins, Hazlewood to the uncertainty of Starc, Lyon, and others. Who knows what new injuries the first Test may cause. Who knows whether Cummins will be good to go for Brisbane, and good to back up after that match, given how tricky stress fractures can be. It's uncertain how long Hazlewood might be out, with a track record of getting injured early in tournaments and a history of initially small injuries becoming extended absences.

Future Uncertain

The back half of the contest may see the main four bowlers back together and all performing well. Or it might see transition setting in much earlier than the long-term aim of 2027 in England. Not through Neser, who is seemingly the next option and could be a great pink-ball Brisbane choice, but beyond that with options unclear. Sean Abbott was in the original team, though he’s now also injured and has not yet played a Test match. Richardson has just had his injury-prone arm repaired, and this format is no place for easing into one’s work. After them lies the real unknown, and amid it all opportunity for the visiting team. You can sense that change approaching, rolling round the bend, and the English team hasn't seen the success since they don’t know when.