LILAC HILL — If you had described the scenario to any England player or supporter a few months out from this Ashes series they would not have dared to dream of one as good as this.
With Australia captain Pat Cummins already missing next week’s first Test in Perth, news dropped shortly after midday local time on Saturday that they would also be without Josh Hazlewood, whose hamstring twinge last week had now been upgraded to a strain that apparently did not show up on the original scan.
“Early imaging can occasionally underestimate low-grade muscle injuries,” explained Cricket Australia, whose lightning-quick early clearance of the initial injury always seemed suspiciously quick.
Starc (right) will lead the attack without his long-time team-mate Hazlewood (Photo: Getty)It means for the first Test at least Australia are missing two of the fearsome pace triumvirate on which their success over the past decade has been built. Only Mitchell Starc survives and at 35 he can’t do it all on his own.
It’s expected that alongside Starc will be Scott Boland and the uncapped 31-year-old Brendan Doggett.
The best possible chance
Put simply, England now have their best chance of winning a Test in Australia for 15 years. And it’s a chance they simply have to take if they are to have any hope of a first series victory here since that glorious winter of 2010-11.
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To make matters even better for England, Saturday morning brought good news regarding Mark Wood, whose own hamstring scan showed nothing sinister. He is still a major doubt for the first Test, but after feeling tightness on day one of the warm-up match against the England Lions at Lilac Hill, this update was positive and keeps in play for the series, a significant boost.
Brydon Carse, laid low with illness on day one at Lilac Hill, also bowled 11 overs on the final day, taking three wickets and looking the best of England’s seamers in the match. He is ready for Perth.
Meanwhile, an Australian team already written off by Stuart Broad as the worst since 2010-11, when Alastair Cook’s 766 runs and an all-round elite unit headed by Andrew Strauss steamrollered the Aussies 3-1, have got even weaker.
Even before news of Hazlewood’s strain, James Anderson backed up his old bowling partner when telling TNT Sports: “There are question marks there, definitely, and there are cracks that England could potentially expose. There’s a great chance to get on top early.”
The oldest Test XI for 95 years
There must also be questions about how much stamina an ageing and injury-hit Australia will have over the course of a five-Test series, even if it is in their own conditions.
Their expected XI for Perth, which will have an average age just over 34, will be the oldest to be selected for a Test match since England played the West Indies in Jamaica in 1930. That team, which had a median age of 37, included a 52-year-old Wilfred Rhodes.
Remarkably, the average age of Australia’s squad, which was already 33.5, has now gone up after 35-year-old Michael Neser was brought in as cover for Perth.
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So vast is the age differential between the two teams that England, whose squad’s average age is 28, could call up their oldest living Test cricketer, 93-year-old Micky Stewart, for this tour and still be younger overall than the Aussies. There’s so much of a gap, that if you replaced Stewart with the world’s oldest man, 113-year-old Joao Marinho Neto, the Bazballers would still have a younger average age than Australia’s squad for Perth.
Aussie replacements are uninspiring
Neser, you may remember, played against England at Adelaide in 2021-22, taking two wickets in that second Test. He will hold no fears for Stokes’ men if he plays.
Doggett, a hit-the-deck bowler who can swing the ball, has never played international cricket before even though he is 31. Having played 50 first-class games, he has an average of 26.46 and did play three games for Durham at the end of the 2025 English summer, taking nine County Championship wickets at 33.44.
Boland is better known having taken remarkable figures of six for seven on debut in the Boxing Day Test demolition of England four years ago. Since then he has been superb in home conditions, taking 42 wickets at 13.42 across eight Tests. Yet he did have a poor tour of England in 2023, the 36-year-old taking two wickets in the pair of Tests he played at an eye-watering 115.50.
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