Not long after his 31-wicket Ashes series, Mitchell Starc was mowing the lawn with his headphones on at his property on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. In the weeks since pocketing the Compton-Miller Medal as Australia’s standout player across the five Tests against England, Starc’s mind had already drifted ahead. Speaking to him through his headphones was the ultra-durable Australian rules footballer Scott Pendlebury on a podcast describing how a red-light therapy sauna he had installed at his Melbourne house fit into his physical recovery routine.
Here was a potential competitive edge Starc had not yet fully explored. Once he returned from the Indian Premier League in May, he too had a red-light therapy sauna at his house.
“It’s nice to step back and see how other people do it,” says Starc, who blew out the candles for his 36th birthday weeks after finishing the Ashes as not only its leading wicket taker but also its fastest bowler. “I’ve been around for a long time, so you can sometimes get stuck in a cricket lens.”
The sauna was the latest addition to the Starc home gym that boasts a tight membership of truly awesome athletic ability. There’s of course his wife Alyssa Healy, the eight-time World Cup winner and former Australia captain. In there too is his brother Brandon, an Olympian who holds the Australian high jump record, along with Brandon’s wife Laura, a former track-and-field athlete, with the latter pair currently living with the cricketers.
Given it was within this same hive of physical excellence that Starc reset himself before last summer, it was little surprise CA’s medicos were again content to leave him to his own devices to prepare for one of the most taxing runs of Test cricket his country has faced, rarely sighting him for weeks before he resumed bowling.
“Particularly the last five or six years, I’ve really enjoyed having a lot of my own say in what my program looks like, what my preparation looks like,” he says. “That was a big part of the lead-in to the Ashes. I’ve got a gym and all the recovery bits I need at home, so it saves me a couple of hours in the car if I’m not doing any bowling. I quite enjoy that trust to train on my own.”
After taking 433 wickets in 105 Tests, somehow getting quicker, more durable and more effective at an age when most bowlers’ bodies are withering, Starc has earned the autonomy. The results speak for themselves; since the beginning of 2020, no bowler has taken more Test wickets. It was no coincidence that when the lower-limb strength of dozens of (mostly younger) fast bowlers around Australia were recently tested by CA’s fitness gurus, none generated more power than Starc.
“He’s one of the most impressive athletes I’ve ever worked with,” says Nick Jones, Australia’s lead physiotherapist. “He’s got some genetic gifts that help him. He’s a tall, lean, springy athlete. But if you consider the fact that he’s 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 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 – all of those things in a melting pot have left us with a pretty special athlete who I think’s potentially got a fair bit more left.”
Starc is a marvel even to his peers. Test cricket is brutal on fast bowlers’ bodies. Preparing to bowl the day after sending down 20 overs is like trying to start a car engine on a frosty morning, a feeling long-time accomplices Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins know too well.
“We always see Starcy warming up day two, three, four and his first ball of the morning just comes down fast,” says Hazlewood. “And we’re like, ‘Jeez, it’d be nice to be like that’.”
If all goes to plan, Starc will at some point in the next six months become the 12th paceman to top 30,000 balls bowled in international cricket. Of those to have gone past that mark, it is doubtful many held an average pace above 140kph into their mid-30s like he did against England last summer. In one recent Test, he ran nearly 55 kilometres, about a quarter of those while moving at 11kph or faster. In his run-up, he hits nearly 25kph – not far off the pace of an Olympic 800-metre runner – before sending upwards of 10 times his body weight through his legs at the crease.
Starc is the poster child of a group of six bowlers aged between 33 and 38 that will underpin the Australian side during their gruelling stretch of Tests. Going off nearly 150 years of convention, that’s the age profile of an attack that should be closer to a retirement home than a cricket pitch.
“Outside of maybe Glenn McGrath, I don’t think we’ve had too many that have pushed this deep into their careers,” says Jones. “It’s uncharted territory. We’re putting some quality plans around each player to give them the best possible chance of being able to go as deep as they can into their careers – hopefully until they want to pull the pin.”
Not even McGrath, whose tally of 42,266 international balls bowled has been topped only by the unbreakable Jimmy Anderson, has gone quite where Australia’s current crop of bowlers are headed. After turning 36, McGrath played the 2006-07 Ashes and then hung up the boots. None of Australia’s other top 10 Test wicket-taking quicks pulled on the Baggy Green after turning 35. Brett Lee, for instance, one of the best conditioned cricketers Australia has produced, played just four Tests after turning 32.
When Scott Boland next plays a Test, he will be Australia’s first frontline seamer aged 37-plus since the 1960s. If Starc pushes on beyond January next year, he will be the second. Michael Neser, who also turns 37 next year, is not far behind. At 38, Nathan Lyon is Australia’s oldest frontline spinner since the 1980s.
“When you’re looking at workload management for Scott and I – we are the data,” says Starc. “There’s no-one really to compare to, and say, ‘OK, they’ve had this much bowling under their belt, what does the preparation look like for the next Test summer for a couple of 36 (and 37) year-olds?'”
Older athletes have in recent years redefined what is possible on the global stage. Lionel Messi has led Argentina to the last two World Cup finals after turning 35. LeBron James won a fourth NBA title after hitting the same age and then a third Olympic gold medal at 39. Tom Brady won his seventh Super Bowl at 43, Kelly Slater his 11th world surfing crown aged 39, Novak Djokovic his 24th grand slam singles title at 36. Jimmy Anderson is still bowling in first-class cricket after turning 44 last month. Closer to home, Pendlebury in May broke the games record in the AFL – one of the most physically taxing endurance sports – when he played his 433rd match aged 38.
Australia’s selectors, intentionally or not, have leant into the trend. In the last 12 months they have selected five of the oldest Australian men’s Test sides since World War II. Even an XI against Bangladesh in Darwin this week that includes the slightly younger Hazlewood over Boland would likely be the oldest they have fielded in 100 years – 10 days older on average than the XI they picked for the Ashes opener in November. In the past two years the Aussies have had more wickets taken by pacemen aged 35-plus than in the previous 60.
The results are hard to argue with. The nucleus of this Australia group has taken it to the past two World Test Championship finals, winning one. They lifted the urn after each of the past three home Ashes series, and drew the past two away, while they have been the most competitive Aussie outfit in India since the early-2000s glory years.
“We’re available to be selected, and we keep performing, and they keep selecting us,” says Hazlewood. “It’s as simple as that. I don’t think it matters if you’re 25 or 35 or 40. If you put yourself up for selection and you’re still playing the game and doing well, then it’s up to them to probably drop you or move you on.”
There is a case to make that the longevity of these current Australian bowlers is even more improbable than what their counterparts are doing in other sports. Messi and James, for instance, have mastered the art of conserving energy later into their careers, a luxury fast bowlers are rarely afforded.
“Some people are naturally gifted and can probably be half a step behind in those sports and get away with it,” notes Hazlewood. The running capacity of Pendlebury deep into his fourth decade is a source of wonder in football circles, but the domestic winter codes, unlike international cricket, have the benefit of a predictable weekly schedule.
Anderson, who was weeks shy of his 42nd birthday when England, perhaps prematurely, ended his career, played only one international format through the most of his last decade at the level. As several of the Aussie quicks noted, he also played the bulk of his cricket on softer English pitches that do not punish the lower limbs and back muscles in the manner of firmer Australian surfaces.
CA’s British-born physical performance lead Ross Herridge suggests tennis players like Djokovic, whose path to major titles requires seven consecutive wins over a fortnight in matches that could last one hour or five, may be best placed to relate to what Starc and co experience.
“The thing that’s really unique about cricket is the unpredictable nature of the load,” says Herridge, a former non-league footballer who later worked for Reading FC in the English Premier League. “Cricket can go two days or five days, or if you lose a bowler … someone has to pick up that load, right? Some games, the quicks can cover 50 kilometres, and some games it can be in the 20s. That variable load makes it very unpredictable compared to some of the other sports.”
As billionaires search for ways to live forever, Australia’s bowlers are in turn striving for their own kind of immortality. “I’m not sure when I’m going to stop playing,” says Boland, “but I’d rather it be a skill thing than an injury that stops me.”
So how has this generation of bowlers defied what was previously considered inevitable?
For one, selectors more closely manage their workloads in white-ball cricket. The most recent example was Starc, Cummins and Hazlewood being held back from bilateral tours of Pakistan and Bangladesh to allow them time to prepare for this run of Tests. Going back further, in 2023, both Starc and Hazlewood missed Tests when fit during a packed schedule in England.
With the occasional rests and increasingly common ‘de-load’ periods that overlap with lower-priority cricket comes a year-round physical commitment to strength and fitness.
“The days of having six weeks off at the end of a season and going on holiday, we’re pretty much away from that now,” says Jones.
There are times when those bowlers may not be bowling, though they are seldom far from a gym or a running track, or for some, a sauna. Boland had one installed at his house before even Starc.
For Starc, the self-motivation required by non-team sport competitors like his brother has rubbed off. “I know there’s been a few times that he hasn’t been able to get into a facility,” he says of his younger sibling who won gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. “You get a school athletics carnival on and then you have an Olympian that can’t get access to facilities.”
So too have the high fitness standards required by the likes of Pendlebury and footballers at his beloved Greater Western Sydney. “I’ve seen some of the Giants guys where they come to the first day of training,” he says, “and they present physically in great condition.”
It was then no fluke he defied the expectations of even Australia’s own coaching and fitness staff by playing all five Ashes Tests last summer.
“He’s a unicorn,” says Herridge. “He’s the best trainer, he’s very meticulous. If you look at that Ashes series last year, he had that eyed months out in terms of his prep.”
There is virtually no aspect of his physical performance that Starc has not optimised. To his bowling boots, for instance, he adds extra spikes for grip, extra leather to cushion the big toe on his landing foot, as well as more shock absorption on other parts of the boot to protect his heel. Maintaining strong nutrition and sleep patterns are priorities even during long stints away from home.
“He hardly touched a drop of alcohol from the start of the Ashes to the end of the Ashes because he knew (he wanted) to get through five Tests,” says Herridge. “He got different flights back home to get back into his own bed to make sure he’s getting the right sleep, the right nutrition. He covers the big rocks, and then he’s looking at those one percenters as well.”
When Starc is peaking physically, conditioning staff want to see him able to send six times his body weight through a force plate on a mid-thigh pull and have him clean-lifting around 100 kilograms.
“That strength and power is what he feels – and we feel – gives him his pace,” says Herridge. “We’ve got physical profiling and testing history on these guys for a 10-year period, so we know what ‘good’ looks like across the system.”
Hazlewood and Cummins have made their own tweaks to their physical routines over the years. They also recognise the benefits of a good night’s sleep, though the recent welcoming of young children into both of their families can challenge those good intentions. Hazlewood religiously sticks to a pre-match routine of getting in the pool before a game or a day of Test cricket, to stretch and get his body moving.
“It takes under 10 minutes and I get a lot out of it,” he says, “and it probably minimises my warm-up when I actually get to the ground.”
Cummins is more disciplined in the gym than in his younger years, while he has a heavy focus on maintaining his running endurance and technique especially as he fatigues during a long tournament or Test series.
“I wouldn’t say there’s one magic thing,” says Australia’s Test captain, “but I’d say in the last year or two, my training has been a lot better than potentially the previous five years where you are just going from game to game.”
Those are lessons that have been forced upon Cummins, whose return to the fray against Bangladesh in Darwin will mark just his second international match in more than a year. Cummins, who despite being the youngest of the Test bowling contingent at 33 is still old by historical pace-bowling standards, has been immune from injury. In fact, Jones concedes diagnoses of the type of bone stress concern Cummins battled last summer are creeping up among pace bowlers all over the country.
While Cummins’ late-teenage and early-to-mid-20s were devastated by recurrences of back stress ailments, he had emerged from an injury-plagued youth to become a beacon for CA’s careful management of young and talented tearaways.
“I’d say for all of us, we were really well looked after during those years,” he says. “We’re not fighting against pre-existing injuries that we didn’t manage properly in our 20s. Those early years has set up our back end.”
But as Jones notes of stress fractures: “If you’ve already had one in your teenage years, your risk of getting another one is a lot higher.”
The ability of Jones and co to facilitate Cummins’ return for the urn-clinching Adelaide Test might be considered a minor miracle. When the injury was revealed on the back of Cummins playing four Tests in the UK and Caribbean last year, the physio who worked with Western Australia’s champion Sheffield Shield teams before moving into a national role made a bold but succinct summary on the prospect of his Ashes return.
“The timelines are tight,” he recalls saying, “but not out of the question.”
Essentially, it was about finding a degree of risk “tolerable” to both Cummins and those invested in his long-term staying power.
“So we kind of mapped out a plan where we thought the first Test was far too aggressive,” says Cummins. “Playing even, say, three Tests was probably too aggressive. But getting ready for the Adelaide Test was about right. It gave myself a big enough break and then a big enough build-up where I could maybe play one Test, maybe two, and most likely I’d probably need a month or so to let any lingering bone stress settle down before then rebuilding back up again.
“It’s very uncommon that that’s how you’d map out a return to play. But we thought, with an Ashes series on the line, that it was worth it.”
The injury to Cummins, CA insisted, was in the ‘stress’ rather than the ‘fracture’ category, which added to the optimism he could be fast-tracked. Still, bowlers recovering from those types of setbacks typically take the best part of a year to recover, which includes six months to rebuild their running loads. Cummins had 10 weeks. Rather than beginning with gentle jogs around an outfield, Herridge was leading him on sprints where he was topping 20kph from the very first week he was cleared to resume running. By mid-December, the skipper was back bowling in a Test match, taking six wickets and sending down 34 overs to bowl Australia to an unbeatable 3-0 series lead.
“I think it was definitely worth it,” says Cummins, who then did not bowl again in a match for four months after scans showed minor (and not unexpected) irritation in his lower back. “Unfortunately missed the T20 World Cup and half an IPL, but they were some of the risks we knew that we were taking on. If the fifth Test was on the line, I probably would have played that as well. But the whole time (we were) thinking that I might only play one Test … (I’m) pretty comfortable with how it all worked out.”
Jones says Cummins’ situation was unusual given his advanced age – 26-and-under bowlers are generally the ones more susceptible to stress complaints – and his proven durability. They are however precisely the kind of curveballs they will have to deal with over the coming 18 months while this remarkable group of bowlers eke out overs in their advancing years. Hazlewood missed all of the most recent Test summer and ensuing T20 World Cup, while Lyon has suffered two serious soft-tissue injuries while fielding in the past three years.
“There’s lots of evidence now to show that we can get them a bit deeper, but in the end … ‘father time’ is undefeated,” says Jones. “Eventually things are going to crop up.”
Until then, there are wickets to take, and history to be made.
NRMA Insurance Bangladesh Test series
First Test: August 13-17, Marrara Stadium, Darwin, 10am (local)
Second Test: August 22-26, Great Barrier Reef Arena, Mackay, 10am (local)
Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Jake Weatherald, Beau Webster
Bangladesh squad (first Test): Najmul Hossain Shanto (c), Mehidy Hasan Miraz (vc), Soumya Sarkar, Shadman Islam, Tanzid Hasan Tamim, Mominul Haque, Mushfiqur Rahim, Litton Das, Amite Hasan, Jaker Ali, Taijul Islam, Taskin Ahmed, Hasan Mahmud, Syed Khaled Ahmed, Ebadot Hossain Chowdhury, Musfik Hasan
