Josh Hazlewood says pacemen won’t go distance as fatigue takes toll

Josh Hazlewood does not expect to play every Test of the Ashes series and doesn’t expect the other fast bowlers to do the same.

Fast bowler Josh Hazlewood reckons Australia’s pacemen will be wary of fatigue through the Ashes. Picture: Paul Stuart

Josh Hazlewood doesn’t expect to play every Test of the Ashes series and doesn’t expect the other fast bowlers to do so either.

Fatigue is an enormous concern ahead of the showdown against England. Several of the players are coming off the World Cup and even the coaches are looking worn down.

Justin Langer fell ill on the day of the team announcement and has been reminded to pace himself. He spent the day in his room.

A four-month stretch in England for two of the biggest series in cricket takes its toll. The process of picking the squad was emotionally draining for someone like Langer, who agonises over such decisions.

Sending eight players home was not something he enjoyed doing. Some were extremely unlucky and the red pen must have hovered over their names a long time before the deed was done.

Langer revealed this week that the strain took its toll in the summer, telling website Cricinfo that his wife, Sue, cried one morning after breakfast because she saw the effect it was having on him. He admits he wasn’t enjoying the job.

The mental and physical demands of cricket are often underestimated. For some, it was no coincidence the South Africa series was such a rolling maul of incidents, coming as it did hard on the back of an Ashes summer.

David Warner was involved in a lot of the controversies and was the only player to be involved in the Tests, ODIs and subsequent T20 series — which he captained in Steve Smith’s absence — that summer.

Warner was late to South Africa for the Tests because of his duties in the T20s and had already shown signs of strain in the previous months. He had become forgetful and disorganised at the back end of the summer.

Warner, Smith, Nathan Lyon, Pat Cummins, Usman Khawaja and Mitchell Starc all played in the World Cup.

Those players squeezed in a few days off before joining the squad in Southampton where they played a three-day game at full intensity. Smith is relentless. It is hard to imagine anyone in the history of the game having spent more time in the nets.

He wears out the coaches with his demands for throwdowns but even that is not enough. In Southampton, during the practice match, he and Lyon disappeared before breakfast for a net session before anyone else arrived.

The moment the game finished Smith put on his pads and headed back out to the nursery ground for another net session.

It borders on obsessive when he can’t find his rhythm and, despite a trio of half-centuries in the World Cup, it appears he may not be feeling right at the crease. The only way he knows how to change that is to keep practising.

Smith was at the optional net session on Sunday that was designed primarily for the bowlers to have a hit. He batted the longest and was last to leave

The physical demands are the greatest for the bowlers and that’s why there are six in the squad. Starc, Lyons and Cummins played every game of the World Cup.

It was apparent that James Pattinson was going to be used sparingly through the series, the team aware that he is prone to breakdown and keen to preserve him for impact on the right pitches and in the right moments.

Hazlewood, however, says that Pattinson is not the only one.

“We haven’t talked about it much yet, to be honest,” he said in Birmingham where the team have begun preparation for the first Test on Thursday.

“I think it would be a very good effort to play all five, especially with my last two years, I’ve missed a few Tests with injury. I’d be really happy with two, three or four even. It’s such a tight schedule.

“Five would be great if we got away with a couple of cheap innings, bowling 30 for the Test or something like that, it’d be great. We’ll play it by ear.”

Australia had their first team meetings on Sunday — the bowlers in one group, the batsmen in another and then all 17 together. The first two meetings focused on the specific skill sets, the last reinforced the bigger picture.