The Ashes 2019: Josh Hazlewood faces uphill task in trying to unseat Test incumbents for Lord’s

Pat Cummins is the only member of Australia’s pace battery that is a chance of playing every Ashes Test. For Josh Hazlewood and Mitch Starc, that represents a step into unknown territory.

Josh Hazlewood and Mitch Starc may have to spend more time on the sidelines.

• Hazlewood pushing for Lord’s recall
• Ashes star switches partnership focus
• Why Smith must never captain Australia again
• Australia’s very understated Edgbaston celebration

It takes courage to face a short ball or to deliver a slow one in the death and it is going to take an enormous display of courage from the Australian selection panel to tinker with the bowling line-up for the second Test.

They’re talking a good talk. They’re insisting there is a squad approach here, that they will use horses for courses and are completely aware of the workloads on this tour. They will look at the wicket and then decide. Etc.

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Josh Hazlewood and Mitch Starc may have to spend more time on the sidelines.

Nathan Lyon might be the only bowler to get five notches on his bedpost this series, and the workhorse Pat Cummins is probably the only seamer with any chance of completing the same.

Still it will be a massive call to make a change to an XI that won by such a large margin despite at times being so far behind the game on the first three days.

So, how do you fix a problem like Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood?

How do you rationalise leaving 95 Test matches of experience, a total of 375 Test match wickets, sitting on the shelf?

Starc bowled the house down in the World Cup just passed, both were instant picks in any Australian side for the past five years, neither is past their prime.

Hazlewood was a gut feel away from playing the first Test. Justin Langer and Trevor Hohns were still not sure when they strode to the middle and examined the wicket well before the team bus docked at Edgbaston on the first morning of the game.

There was nothing between he and Siddle in the minds of both, but they opted for the Victorian veteran.

It was probably his English experience that got him over the line. Exile from the national team in recent years has given the seamer time to learn to talk like the locals on the County circuit. Hazlewood’s long run at the top hasn’t allowed him to do the same.

Pat Cummins found some great rhythm in the second innings at Edgbaston.

Siddle made the most of the opportunity. Langer said he may have been the best bowler in the game, his none-for in the second innings the best he had seen. There’s sense there even allowing for the hyperbole that is the coach’s wont.

So, Hazlewood finds himself shadowing a bowler who the coach thinks was the pick of the group at Edgbaston.

Good luck with that, Josh.

And then there is Starc. There is talk about that he had been assured of a place in the second Test. Who knows?

Certainly there would have been an assumption that James Pattinson probably wouldn’t play back-to-back games, especially if his workloads were high.

Pattinson only bowled eight overs in the second innings at Edgbaston. The other thing in his favour is that it is nine days between Tests for those who are not playing in the County game at Worcester and Pattinson is one of those.

James Pattinson impressed in his return to the Test fold.

If he was to play back-to-back Tests then the first and second are ideal as this break is greater than the four days between their second and third games and the fourth and fifth matches.

There is another nine-day pause, with a tour match in Derby, between the third and fourth matches.

The selectors have shown in the past they are willing to throw out plans. They bypassed Will Pucovski and Siddle, who were set to play Sri Lanka last summer and gave a start to Kurtis Patterson and Jhye Richardson because circumstances changed.

Starc and Hazlewood were in a hurry to impress when thrown the ball in the tour game. They both took wickets with their fifth deliveries, creating a rhyming couplet with the scalps of Worcester openers Josh Dell and Tom Fell. If ever a game had the potential for a limerick …

Starc swung the ball into the stumps, Hazlewood nipped it back with the same results.

England, by contrast, is pushing a cart around the counties beseeching medical rooms to “throw out your fit”.

Jofra Archer is set to make his Test debut at Lord’s.

The pickings are slim.

Jimmy Anderson’s breakdown was a major factor in the Test match and will remain so for the rest of the series. He will miss Lord’s and surely must prove his fitness in the domestic game. Selectors cannot afford for him to break down again.

Mark Wood and Olly Stone are both injured. Jofra Archer was recovering from a side strain and considered too risky for the first Test, but after proving himself for Sussex Second XI with six wickets in the first innings, a century with the bat and solid bowling in the second innings, he will be making his debut at Lord’s.

Born and raised in Barbados, he is a recent convert to the England game — courtesy of an English-born father — and recently qualified to play his first game for his adopted country.

That is not an observation to question his place in a side that has long been the UN of cricket, but to highlight the fact that despite being 25 he does not have a great history of English conditions, playing only 28 first-class games for Sussex.