Father time is undefeated. Although Australia's ageing cartel of world-class fast bowlers are railing against the slow setting of the sun, defying conventional wisdom, age will eventually weary them, and the forthcoming year might condemn.
Pat Cummins, 33, Josh Hazlewood, 35, Mitchell Starc, 36, and Scott Boland, 37, are all in outstanding shape as they reach the start line of a run of 20 Tests in the space of 12 months, possibly 21 Tests if they reach the WTC final. The first of those Tests begins against Bangladesh in Darwin on August 13. All bar Boland are aiming to also play in the ODI World Cup, in October and November 2027.
Australia's selectors, coaches and sports science and sports medicine (SSSM) staff are collectively holding their breath on what is to come. It is a more challenging schedule than 2023, which also featured a tour of India, a WTC final, an away Ashes, and an ODI World Cup, and this time, the quartet are four years older.
Questions are understandably being asked about what the fast-bowling stocks behind the big four look like given the first-choice back-ups are 36-year-old Michael Neser and 32-year-old Brendan Doggett. The pipeline of ready-made fast bowling in Australia's domestic system appears nowhere near as bountiful right now as it has been in the past.
Stock watch: how healthy is Australia's pipeline?
As the warm winter sun rose over the picturesque Allan Border Field in Brisbane's inner north-eastern suburbs on the last day of July, a group of Australia's most senior bowling coaches took a short walk from the National Cricket Centre down Greg Chappell Street to discuss that very question over coffee at Collingwood Black Espresso.
There were decades of coaching experience at all levels among them, as well as hundreds of Test wickets and thousands of first-class ones. The group included Australia's head coach Andrew McDonald; new bowling coach James Franklin, who will share team bowling duties with Daniel Vettori over the coming year; national pace bowling coach Adam Griffith; two-time Sheffield Shield-winning South Australia coach Ryan Harris; Queensland bowling coach Hamish Bennett, and many others from around the country.
The coffee break came during a series of meetings over two days between Australia men's coaching staff and the majority of men's state head and assistant coaches. The gathering revived a series of annual get-togethers that had not taken place for several years due to the crowded nature of the schedule. It followed a similar annual meeting between Cricket Australia and state SSSM staff weeks earlier. That included Australia's physical performance lead Ross Herridge and Australian cricket's head physio Nick Jones - who also made a presentation to the bowling coaches in late July.
The coaches discussed a broad range of topics, including batting depth, domestic pitches, contracting, scheduling, and player development.
"We weren't looking for outcomes from the meeting," McDonald said. "It was really just sharing and connecting and collaborating.
"We're challenged with a different landscape within the game, and how we're all going to play our part in providing opportunities for the players, and navigating [those] challenges. There's always differing opinions within that and [about] where people think the game's heading. So it was good just to hear everyone's point of view."
Among the lead items on the agenda were Australia's fast-bowling stocks, the age profile of the senior team, the depth underneath, the challenge of three formats, franchise cricket, and the injury crisis that is plaguing development. Specifically lumbar stress injuries. In layman's terms, stress fractures of the lower back. In Australian cricket vernacular, "stressies".
Australia's big four, ageless as they have seemed, haven't been immune to stress fractures, and to injury more broadly. Starc and Boland have been indefatigable, although neither is playing pain-free. Starc had one stress fracture in his back at 23 but has had others in his shin and foot. Boland has, remarkably, never had one, but has fought issues with his knee and foot. Cummins, having overcome years of back problems in his late teens and early 20s, which saw him miss six years of Test cricket, has played one international match in the last 12 months after suffering another lumbar stress injury at 32 which sent shock waves through all levels of Australian cricket last year. Hazlewood had stress fractures as a teenager and then another stress injury in his back at 27. More recently he has had other issues. He has not played a Test in 12 months and has played just five of Australia's last 14 due a series of side strains, a hamstring strain, and ongoing Achilles problems.
The immediate back-ups are not immune either. Neser was magnificent in the Ashes but had stress fractures in his youth. He is only 18 months removed from a serious hamstring injury and suffered a calf strain early in August. Doggett had multiple stress fractures early in his career. He also suffered two hamstring injuries last summer, one minor, prior to his Test debut, and one major that led to him missing South Australia's second Shield title. Sean Abbott, 34, toured with two Australia Test squads in 2025 and was in the initial Ashes squad ahead of Neser before suffering a hamstring injury on the same day as Hazlewood in the final Shield game before the first Test.
Beyond those three, Jhye Richardson, who turns 30 in September, played one Test in the Ashes as part of a four-man pace attack but lost his CA contract. The selectors stated they are unsure of his ability to play in a three-man pace attack owing to his many injury troubles. Richardson has had three surgeries on his right bowling shoulder and one on a hamstring in the past seven years. He also suffered lumbar stress fractures as a teenager.
It has long been hoped Lance Morris, 28, might be Australia's answer for life beyond Starc as the high-ball-speed strike weapon in a varied attack. But since bursting into Test calculations in the summer of 2022-23 he has been plagued by stress fractures in his lower back that eventually forced him to have a screw and cable surgically fused into his troubled vertebrae last year to avoid further fractures. It is the same surgery allrounder Cameron Green had after his fifth stress fracture in 2024. Morris has not played a game since March 2025 and is only just building his loads back towards 100%.
Xavier Bartlett, 27, has enjoyed an injury-free run that has made him a white-ball staple for Australia in recent times but he has only lately built some robustness following years of stress fractures in his early 20s. The demand he enjoys in white-ball cricket, including his attractiveness to global T20 franchises, has limited him to just 14 first-class fixtures since the start of the 2023-24 summer.
Spencer Johnson, 30; Riley Meredith, 30; and Billy Stanlake, 31, are three men with the pace and height valued in international cricket. All three have had major injuries and are veering down the white-ball path that the smaller, skiddier but highly skilled 31-year-old Nathan Ellis has committed to at the cost of a red-ball career. Johnson's first stress fracture last year, at 29, despite a low workload, was a surprise and a major worry for his prospects as a future Test bowler. He has only played six first-class matches in his career and none since November 2024.
Nathan McAndrew, 33, and Fergus O'Neill, 25, sit in a slightly different category. They have been far and away the most successful and durable seamers in Shield cricket over the last five years. Joel Paris, 33, has also had remarkable Shield success, but has been less durable and carefully managed by Western Australia. O'Neill is the ideal age to lead the next generation. However, questions are being asked, fairly or otherwise, about the ability of all three to translate their Shield success - which owes to unrelenting accuracy, swing and seam movement - without the added pace and bounce that the likes of Cummins, Hazlewood and Boland can extract in combination with similar accuracy at Test level.
There are high hopes for Australia's 2024 Under-19 World Cup winning quartet of Callum Vidler, Mahli Beardman, Tom Straker and Charlie Anderson. Beardman made his T20I debut on the back of an eye-catching BBL but is yet to play first-class cricket. Vidler took a stunning four-wicket haul in the Shield final in March 2025, in just his third Shield match. But both are currently recovering from stress fractures.
Anderson has played one first-class match and three List A games but at 21 has had the same surgery Morris underwent to reinforce his lumbar spine after multiple fractures. Straker has been the most durable of the four; he has played 13 Shield games already, including eight last summer. But his average speed is at the lower end of the four.
McDonald said the challenges of managing the ageing cohort and nurturing the talent that's emerging from the U-19s is going to be "incredibly complex".
"I think we always like to compare and look at the next generation and sort of almost tag them to say that they're going to replace Mitchell Starc's ball speed or Pat Cummins' accuracy. But I think they'll be their own identity. I think they'll grow. We've got a really good first-class system that underpins all of that.
"There are some players in between the ageing cohort and the younger guys as well. They've got an important part to play in all this.
"I don't want them to be compared. I want those [younger] guys to forge their own careers, and give them time as well. I think there's always this urgency and rush with replacing players, and what the next layer looks like. Hopefully, our ageing cohort have got a few more years, and we have to allow the gap to be bridged."
Harris took 113 Test wickets at 23.52 between 2010 and 2015. He was part of a bridging generation of Australian pace bowlers between the era of Glenn McGrath, Brett Lee, Jason Gillespie and Michael Kasprowicz and the current big four. Harris agrees with McDonald that the talent is there overall, with potentially a couple of missing elements.
"The depth of our bowling in the country is really good," he said. We've got a lot of mid-130kph bowlers that are very good. Probably the only thing we're lacking is guys coming through that can bowl consistent pace, good pace, and guys that are similar heights to Starc and Hazlewood."
A missing generation
The lack of ready-made depth in the group aged 24 to 30 is a curious question within Australia's system right now. Adam Griffith, who is overseeing the development of Australian fast bowlers across the system has an obvious answer.
"It's the cycle. When you have such a strong group that plays for so long, you miss the next generation. You miss the next tier, because there's no opportunity."
Australia were in a similar place two decades ago. In 2009, Lee retired from Test cricket at 32 due to injury although he continued to play international white-ball cricket for three more years. McGrath retired in 2007, and Gillespie and Kasprowicz retired from first-class cricket in 2008. Stuart Clark played his last Test at 34 in 2009 but did not retire until 2011.
Australia did have a group of quicks in the 24-30 age bracket then, ready to go, including Harris, Mitchell Johnson and Peter Siddle, who took 647 Test wickets between them, won a home Ashes together 5-0 in 2013-14, and beat South Africa away in the same summer. There was further ready-made support in Ben Hilfenhaus, who took 99 Test wickets at 28.50 and Doug Bollinger, who took 50. Most of those bowlers had the extra pace that appears to be missing from the current crop. The durability of those five allowed Australia's selectors at the time to introduce Cummins, Starc, Hazlewood and a young James Pattinson to Test cricket before they were quite ready, which would pay long-term dividends despite mixed results at the time, particularly in away Ashes series.
There are a few theories why there are no such hardened bodies in place to support the young crop at present.
The state of Shield pitches, in combination with the double-lacquer Kookaburra ball and the bonus points system was a topic of conversation at the coaches' meeting. In recent years Shield pitches have had a lot more grass coverage than in previous decades, and the revamped ball moves more than the older iteration did. The bonus-point structure does appear to incentivise fast-moving games. Wickets tumbling also ensures that outright results, which maximise points, are likelier inside four days, putting teams in a better position to win the competition.
The major public concern has been the effect these factors are having on Australia's batting depth. But the unintended consequence may be that seam bowlers who pitch full at under 130kph are being rewarded and developed more than quicks with extra pace and bounce.
"I think the conditions have played a big role in that," Griffith, who was Tasmania head coach and Victoria bowling coach prior to taking up his current role at CA, said. "The ball nips around, so you don't need guys with high speed. In fact, the guys who bowl high speed sometimes aren't the best option in those conditions and they tend to go for more runs.
"The guys that run in and nip them around at 125-130kph are harder to play in a lot of the conditions that we've seen over the last four or five years, and hence why they become the better bowlers."
Not every state coach agrees that the pitches are entirely to blame, and no one is suggesting they should be made flat to compensate. Harris does not believe they are as bad as some suggest, but he does agree that there needs to be more variety in the Shield surfaces and more opportunities to play at Test venues, which CA have tried to plan for in 2026-27.
"We'd like to play more at the MCGs and the SCGs, and even Perth Stadium; I know there's a game there this year," Harris said. "But if we can get wickets that are nice and bouncy or go the other way and spin a lot - you don't want them all the same - then I think that's going to create better cricket. We're going to learn more and our players are going to get better."
It's worth noting that Harris averaged 33.51 from 38 first-class matches between 2001 and his Test debut in 2010. O'Neill currently has 200 first-class wickets at 19.43 from 49 games.
He is one of four seamers to have taken at least 100 Shield wickets across the last five seasons at a cost of less than 22 per wicket. No seam bowler averaged under 24.65 in the equivalent five-season stretch prior to Harris' Test debut in 2010.
O'Neill conceded last year that his trip to India with Australia A created a different challenge in terms of finding a way through on lifeless pitches, when simply bowling full in Shield cricket often extracted a nick due to the excessive sideways movement on offer.
"What I learned from being over there is, especially in India, on those pitches, ball speed holds a bit of weight," O'Neill said. "Henry Thornton was probably the main one that had some success in that second game. He just had that little bit more speed. And I don't think it necessarily has to be every ball. You've got to have an element of [going] up in speed, or an element that you can hit someone on the pad."
There are differing theories on whether a bowler could add pace midway through a career. Some believe you've either got it or you don't. But there are some in the system who believe if you don't test it or train it, you won't ever know.
Hamish Bennett is one of those. Having played all forms for New Zealand in a 17-year career he is now mentoring Queensland's quicks, who range from the promising duo of Vidler and Straker to Bartlett and Neser when they are not with Australia. A conversation with Neser in the winter of 2025 about his Test aspirations sparked a thought bubble.
"Usain Bolt, when he was getting ready for the 100 metres at the Olympics, during his training, I'm sure he sprinted at full pace," Bennett said. "At times with the amount of training bowlers do, sometimes you just fall into a training speed of just bowling for the sake of bowling.
"I was just saying to them, 'Right, we're actually going to practise bowling fast. So what mentality do you have to have? What do you have to focus on in your action?' We had the radar up there for live feedback, and then I collected some ball speeds, and then when we did it again, I just gave everyone a number and said, 'Right, today you've got to be in this number, and as soon as you're not, you're out.'"
Neser bought in, and it led to one of the best summers of his career.
"It was not so much trying to be a different bowler and elevate my pace but more just maintain my ball speed where it has dropped in the past throughout the game," Neser said.
"We did a lot on managing certain training sessions, bringing back the amount of overs I bowled, and actually bringing the intensity up.
"It's like sprint work. Make sure I keep hitting high speed and touching that zone that you don't hit all the time. Because I feel like if you don't do that, you lose it a bit. I found that helped with maintaining ball speed."
Much was made of Neser's success in the Ashes with keeper Alex Carey up to the stumps. But he hit 140kph with Carey up, which he might not have achieved in years past.
Similar conversations and sessions are happening with Bartlett, under the guidance of Griffith and Franklin. Bartlett's average speed dropped well below 130kph in recent white-ball matches, under fatigue, but there are hopes some gains will be made before the white-ball tours of Zimbabwe and South Africa in mid-September.
A rite of passage
With an increase in speed comes an increase in risk. Fast bowling is back-breaking work.
This is the issue that has everyone concerned, from the top of Australian cricket down to grassroots. Pre-teens are suffering stress fractures from bowling too much. CA's U-17 and -19 pathways are littered with bone-stress injuries.
"Some people say it's like a rite of passage," said Vidler. "But I was kind of hoping I wouldn't have to go through it."
Vidler, Beardman and Anderson are breaking at the start of their professional careers. Morris and Green have had screws and a cable put in their backs in their mid-to-late 20s, after being managed as carefully as any fast bowlers in history. Johnson suffered a fracture at 29, though he had hardly ever had back pain previously. And Cummins, Australia's most prized asset, suffered yet another fracture at 32 with no red flags in terms of workloads leading up to it.
Jones has become an expert in this field after 14 years in professional cricket with Western Australia and Australia as a leading physio and researcher dealing with so many of these cases. But even he remains flummoxed as to how to solve what could be described as an epidemic. "It's obviously still one of the biggest issues that we face in the game," he said.
Jones presented data on lumbar bone stress injuries to the bowling coaches last month. It was data that had been gathered over 20 years by him and his predecessors at CA - Alex Kountouris, Kevin Sims, David Beakley and Richard Saw. There is alarm that the number of stress fractures is rising back towards the peak levels of the mid-2000s, having been relatively low from 2010 to 2020 thanks to careful management and MRI protocols throughout CA's pathways.
But that is just the pathways. There's alarm in the wider cricket community.
Tom Hill was Jones' colleague for eight years as WA cricket's head doctor before heading into private practice as a sports doctor in Perth.
"In the community I might see five or six kids a week with lumbar stress fractures," Hill said.
Some of those kids are as young as 12. There is pessimism about whether the issue can ever be solved, given the force that goes through the lumbar spine of bowlers at all ages and the lateral flexion and counter-rotation imposed on a part of the body that is mainly designed to flex forward and back. Growing bones are also far more susceptible than fully mature ones. Scientific evidence suggests that a male's musculoskeletal development and peak bone mass is not reached until 26. Jones noted that once a bowler has had a lumbar stress fracture the recurrence rate is somewhere between 33% and 50%.
The major concern on the medical side is that kids are bowling far more balls on average per week in training than Australia's big four. Many within the elite system only clock between 90 and 120 balls (15-20 overs) between two or three sessions, depending on their playing schedule. There is even a debate on whether some of the professionals in the system need one or two days' rest in between sessions, as well as periodic five- to ten-day de-load periods, depending on their age and injury history, while a lot of teenagers in the community are bowling every day.
"We've got national workload guidelines that exist in the community, [which] we recently updated," Jones said. "I think the challenge we've got is that the adherence to that, anecdotally, is not strong, and talented kids get pulled from pillar to post because they're good."
Workloads are one aspect. There is concern among the old guard that bowling technique is another that is potentially being ignored. Daryl Foster is one of the original researchers on lumbar stress injuries among fast bowlers worldwide. He worked closely with Dennis Lillee, the godfather of Australian fast bowling, through his recovery from stress fractures in the early 1970s, spent two decades as WA coach, and then worked at the MRF Pace Foundation and at Lillee's bowling academy. He is still helping junior coaches at Christchurch Grammar in Perth and is concerned not enough emphasis is being put on building safer actions from an earlier age.
"It's an epidemic," Foster said. "It needn't be as great as it is. I'm not saying we can cure 100%. I don't think we can. But I think that we hopefully can get 80% of the kids that want to bowl fast at 13-14 years of age, we can get them through to their early 20s and still be prospective fast bowlers."
Jasprit Bumrah might be the enemy of progress on that front as Harris notes, though Bumrah himself is a disciple of Lillee's technical philosophies.
"If you've got a Jasprit Bumrah or a Lasith Malinga, and you saw what they were doing, would you try and change them to bowl technically incorrect? The answer is no," Harris said.
Bumrah, like Green, Morris, and many other Australian and New Zealand quicks, has a screw and a cable in his spine.
They say success leaves clues, but in this case, success and longevity might reveal the answers. The origin stories of Starc and Boland are illuminating.
"I didn't bowl as a kid, I was a wicketkeeper," Starc said. "It wasn't until 15 that I then started to learn how to bowl. I don't know if it's helped or not, but I didn't have that exposure to synthetic concrete wickets as a kid. I didn't have that workload."
Boland, who started his professional career later, at 22, is closing on 30,000 deliveries in professional cricket and 500 first-class wickets, and his back has not broken once.
"Up until I was 14, I was a batter who bowled a little bit," Boland said. "Me and my cousin, when we played U-16s, he'd keep for half, I'd keep for half, and we'd bowl when we're not keeping.
"I was never in a pathway programme where I was bowling all the time.
"I only bowled twice a week. It's so much easier on your body when you get those little breaks, but I didn't know that then. It's just how it worked."
Even Neser's backstory has similar themes. He had stress fractures in his early teens after bowling endlessly to his older brother in the backyard but his father was an orthopedic spinal surgeon and did not allow him to bowl anything other than offspin later in his teens. He instead developed as a batter before returning to seam-up in grade cricket once he left Queensland's U-19 programme.
"That's one of the reasons I'm still going, because I didn't put those Ks in my back that early," Neser said. "It was a blessing in disguise that I stopped bowling through juniors, but then it also made me develop a bit later."
The experience of that trio is in stark contrast to Cummins and Green. Both were fast-tracked into Shield cricket at 17. Cummins bowled 136 overs across back-to-back-to-back games inside three weeks of his debut for New South Wales, including 65 in the third game alone. He broke after bowling 44 on Test debut just six months later. Green's load wasn't as massive, but he too broke after three straight Shield games to start his career.
Neser had another fracture at 25 but believes some excessive weight training might have contributed. Likewise, Starc suffered his first fracture later at 23 after playing non-stop from September 2011 to August 2013. But a turn to bespoke strength work in his rehab built extraordinary resilience thereafter.
The prototype
Neser laughs when asked how Starc can manage to bowl 140kph plus all day year in year out without breaking at 36 years young.
"He's a freak," Neser said.
Jones agrees. "He's one of the most impressive athletes I've ever worked with," he said. "He's got some genetic gifts that help him.
"He has also got one of the best work ethics you could ever hope to instil into an Australian fast bowler, and then the level of toughness or resilience to be able to grit your teeth when there's something going on in your body, or multiple things going on in your body, in big games, big moments, where you've got to get back up and do it day after day when things would probably have ground other bowlers to a halt."
Herridge has seen a few good athletes in his time working in the English Premier League as a strength and conditioning coach, but he is in awe of Starc.
"He's a unicorn," Herridge said. "He's amazing. He's genetically gifted. But I think one of the key things is the work he puts in. He has the best trainer. He's very meticulous."
During the Ashes, Starc was preparing like an Olympic athlete. Not surprising, perhaps, when you consider his brother, Brandon, has placed fifth in an Olympic high jump final.
"He hardly touched a drop of alcohol from the start of the Ashes to the end of the Ashes, because he knew to get through five Tests he had to make sure he was doing all the right things," Herridge said. "He got different flights back home to get back into his own bed to make sure he was getting the right sleep.
"He's put a sauna in his house. He uses infrared. He does a lot of the smaller things. He's been speaking to the dietician around the one-percenters for his nutrition."
Those are the reasons he shows no sign of slowing after 433 wickets in 105 Tests. Herridge gave some GPS data on Starc's typical five-day Test match: He covers 54km in total distance on his feet, 11km of that is running at more than 11kph. Close to 6km of that is at speeds above 21kph. His peak run-up speed is 24.5kph - or keeping pace for short intervals with world class middle-distance runners in race conditions.
Starc was active in athletics as a kid before he learned how to bowl. Of all the theories on how to develop fast bowlers without breaking them, it used to be universally agreed upon that building more efficient runners was a reliable way to go about it. That has perhaps been lost from the core principles Lillee passed down.
"If I'm a young fast bowler coming through and I haven't quite got the best running technique, then I'm employing someone or getting help with it to try and make that as efficient as possible," Harris said.
But Starc said if he had his time again, he would have introduced strength training sooner: "I never had that knowledge as a kid."
The eight- to ten-week training blocks in his current schedule are invested straight into strength training to rebuild the strength he loses over the course of a long playing stretch due to fatigue. Starc ensures he hits his physical markers at that time, like power cleaning 100kg, and doing an isometric mid-thigh pull of six times his body weight. Herridge tests every bowler in the system with an isometric belt squat to measure stretch relative to body mass, and Starc is the strongest in the country on that metric. The emphasis on building strength through the posterior chain is key for Starc. If the posterior chain is firing and strong, the load on the lumbar spine is lessened significantly.
But therein lies the problem - finding eight to ten weeks to invest in that training when you want to play all three formats for your country and franchise cricket as well.
Between September 2011 and August 2013 Starc played 90 matches, and bowled 1134 overs non-stop. He played in the Champions League, the BBL, One-Day Cup matches, Shield matches, tour matches, Test matches, ODIs, T20Is, three formats for Yorkshire, and finally broke after tours of India and England.
From 2016 to 2023 he did not go to the IPL - at significant personal cost. But using that time to invest in his body has kept him going to an age where others who bowl at his pace have not been able to, which might have been a net gain. He has returned to the IPL but given up T20I cricket to buy more time in his calendar. As fit and as strong as he is, he still can't do it all.
"As a 36-year-old, it's too much for me now," Starc said. "Hence, I've given up one of the white-ball formats.
"I think it's very individual with how difficult people find it, but it's not an easy one to navigate your way around all three at the same time."
Build them or break them
Beau Casson is about to step into the hot seat as WA's new coach. Unlike his predecessor, Adam Voges, he might have Morris and Beardman fit and ready to play at the same time. The temptation will be there to play them as often as possible if the scans are clear and they are pain-free.
"I've never owned a Ferrari, but you'd take him out on the weekends," Casson joked. "You can't drive him every day, and we've got to appreciate that.
"The most important thing: those two players want to play red-ball cricket. They want to play at the highest level. They want to play Test cricket, and that's the number one goal. And they want the baggy green, which is something that, as a cricket lover, you love seeing, love hearing."
Vidler has the same goal.
"The dream is to represent Australia in Test cricket," he said. "That would be the goal, and you want to do everything leading up to that. I guess, it's a tricky path as well because you are a professional in terms of a career, and there's very lucrative opportunities in the white-ball format, especially."
Therein lies the problem. Everyone wants a fit young fast bowler in their team and they want them playing everything.
The moment Australia's young quicks get motoring again they will be pulled in all directions between state cricket, the BBL, franchise cricket, Australia A and possibly international cricket with the risk of re-injury high.
Bennett knows the conundrum better than most as another with a screw and wire in his lower spine.
"[Vidler] was just cruising [at training] and bowling these beautiful bouncy outswingers, and you think, 'Geez, we'd love to line that up every game', but you know you can't," he said.
"I think the main reason for stress fractures is probably poor selection. At times, I think we can rush kids, and because of their talent, we try and rush them and play them too much, as opposed to worrying about what the next two or three years look like."
A key takeaway from the coaches meetings was to ensure the management of young quicks across the country was unified despite a number of competing interests.
"One of the things that we're quite keen to do coming out of that chat is to dive into a fast-bowling project that probably at the end of this process looks to give some really clear, evidence-based, best practice-informed guidelines," Jones said.
"This is not a CA-led project. This is an Australian cricket project, built together to be able to provide some guidelines or a starting point for the overall management of pace bowlers in the pathway, particularly when they're in that vulnerable zone, which is quite a long period of time.
"I think that's a multi-year project. We can't click our fingers [and make it happen]."
Best practice guidelines could well be adhered to by coaches and SSSM staff. But the contracting system might make them irrelevant. Franchise cricket is becoming so lucrative that the days of carefully managing a bowler towards a long-term goal of Test cricket and essentially paying him to not play at certain stages of the year for the good of his body are diminishing rapidly.
At one of Vidler's recent sessions at Ray Lindwall Oval, the ground next to Allan Border Field, named after one of Australia's great fast bowlers, Starc was bowling in an adjacent net. While Vidler asked Starc for advice around his run-up and gather at the crease, Starc pondered a different question.
"He just wants to play cricket. How do you tell a kid to hold back," Starc said.
"I'd love those four or five guys to be 25 years old right now because then they're basically purring when they walk out the door. They're straight in and they're ready-made Test cricketers.
"But they've got a lot to learn and the patient side of it or the knowledge of all of this stuff is what you want to teach to the young bowlers. There's going to be some rough roads."
Australia's young quicks need time while their ageing quicks are running out of time. And time won't stand still.