Unbreakable bonds lift Australia to rare place

The Australian Test team, world champion, high on a string of victories around the world and a comprehensive victory over Pakistan in Perth, finds itself in rare air.

Nathan Lyon and Pat Cummins address the media after the first Test against Pakistan. Picture: Getty Images

The Australian Test cricket team, world champion, high on a string of victories around the world and a comprehensive victory over Pakistan in Perth, finds itself in rare air and at a special time in life.

There is a hell of a lot of love in the room, this group has been through some terrible lows, as a collective and as individuals, but has roots that run deep. They may not all be best mates, but have found a respect for each others’ talent through shared experience, good and bad.

There was clear affection and history in the gentle ribbing exchanged by Pat Cummins and celebrated off-spinner Nathan Lyon in the press conference after the Perth Test.

The politically correct captain and the unassuming, understated boy from the bush should have ­little in common, but there’s a bond there that is genuine and heartfelt.

It is a bond that you see repeated in different permutations and combinations throughout the Australian XI.

They have been through a lot and go back a long, long way.

Usman Khawaja and David Warner are an odd couple whose relationship goes back to primary school. The Pakistan-born player’s mum loves the mischievous Matraville boy deeply and jokingly calls him “shaitan” – the Urdu term for devil.

The bowlers cut their teeth ­together in under age and state cricket. Steve Smith has found his brother from another mother in Marnus Labuschagne. Mitch Marsh is so popular they would take him on tour for the company even if he couldn’t play cricket. And on it goes.

This is, pardon the cliché, a band of brothers.

It was hard not to note, as Lyon and Cummins ribbed each other in front of the press pack, that the Test numbers on their shirts are 421 and 423.

The off-spinner made his debut in 2011 and the now captain made his the same year. Lyon, the most successful off-spinner of all time, taking five wickets in his first match against Sri Lanka at Galle, Cummins winning man of the match in his first Test against South Africa in the shadow of the Galle fort.

Their mate Mitchell Starc, Test cap 425, made his debut the same year against New Zealand at the Gabba, where he took the wicket of Brendon McCullum — the English coach with an aversion to drinking with Australians.

That same morning, Starc got his Test cap as a pugnacious little left-hander by the name of David Warner was given Test cap number 426.

This quartet has endured longer than the average Australian marriage (12.2 years according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics).

Given that a cricket team is, essentially, an arranged marriage, it is a tribute to all that even when times have tested their relationships, they have found a way to keep it together and in doing so developed a deep respect for each others’ various – and sometimes contradictory – characters.

The bowling quartet has 1323 collective wickets, the ABC stats guru Ric Finlay has crunched the numbers and believes that by the end of the summer the four, if they stay together, will have passed the most prolific quartet in the history of the game.

“It is a pretty unique, pretty special bowling group,” Lyon said before the Test. “I feel like we have all helped each other out and they have probably helped me out a lot more than I have helped them out, but I have thoroughly enjoyed playing Test match cricket with them.

“You know what you are going to get. They are extremely professional. And they are bloody good at what they do, which makes my job a lot easier.”

Before the Test, Cummins was asked if the bowlers were aware of just how much they had achieved. While Lyon was not part of the 2023 World Cup squad, the seamers have now snared themselves three World Cups and a World Test Championship.

“Joshy and Starcy are two of my best mates,” Cummins said. “Not only do we get along great off the field, we have been through so much together, through wins and World Cup ­triumphs.

“We are going to be lifetime mates and we are going to be sitting together and having a beer or a glass of red together for the rest of our lives, just talking about some of those memories, telling the same jokes and ripping into each other. They are two legends and I have been very fortunate to play (alongside them).”

You can’t buy shared experience and this is a group that finds itself in a rare place. Not many sides get to play so much cricket together, but when they do it suggests they are uniquely successful and complementary.

Perhaps the last time Australian cricket was this well placed was in the era of Ricky Ponting, Glenn McGrath, Justin Langer, Matthew Hayden, Adam Gilchrist and the like.