During the latter days of his maddeningly truncated Test career, Bruce Reid seemed always to be either taking bags of wickets or missing through injury.
In fact, in his last nine Tests, spread across three years, Reid scooped 51 wickets at 18.58, striking every 43 balls. Nineteen wickets came in the final two Tests he was able to complete, 11 months apart. In this period virtually every over from Reid was a privilege to watch.
Josh Hazlewood was a near constant threat in his comeback spell.Credit:AP
Thirty-one years on, and 31-year-old Josh Hazlewood has developed a similarly frustrating niche. Since the end of the 2019 Ashes series, Hazlewood has played just 11 of Australia’s 24 Tests, in between hamstring and side issues.
When he has played, Hazlewood’s combination of height, subtle movement and snappy pace have proven almost as challenging as Reid’s once did: 34 wickets at 23.52 while conceding just 2.41 runs per over. When he hasn’t, Australia have worked their options.
Jhye Richardson, Michael Neser, and most notably Scott Boland, have all offered moments of quality. But it was hard not to enjoy the sight of Hazlewood, fit and in fine rhythm, asking fiendish questions of a rattled South African top order at the SCG.
In an opening spell of 6-1-11-1 from the Paddington End, Hazlewood created three and a bit chances, torturing the Proteas’ captain Dean Elgar as his teammates had done in Brisbane and Melbourne.
Hazlewood did so with a line so immaculate that Elgar, Sarel Erwee and Henrich Klaasen were compelled to play at all but four deliveries. By comparison Cummins, while still demanding, permitted the batters to leave seven of his first 18 offerings.
Having edged past the slips in the first over, then snicked into the outstretched right hand of Steve Smith, only for Richard Kettleborough to decide there was not enough broadcast evidence to uphold the catch, Elgar was disposed of with a searing bouncer that followed him from around the wicket.
It wasn’t just the new ball that Hazlewood used smartly, either. Coming back after tea and a long tandem between Nathan Lyon and Ashton Agar, he followed a tight first over to Khaya Zondo with a classical fifth stump teaser to coax an edge from Temba Bavuma. Were a sixpence to be dropped onto a length, Hazlewood’s odds of finding it on request would be short.
Those incisions set things up for Cummins to deliver a brutal, gladiatorial spell under the late evening Sydney floodlight, like a sharpshooter making early headway for the arrival of an armoured division.
As a complementary quartet, Hazlewood, Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Lyon have generally had most bases covered so far as questions of opponents. And as well as the latter trio have performed over the same period in which Hazlewood has been regularly absent, it is possible to wonder if even better returns might have been gained.
While his laconic, country NSW style never suggests much in the way of explosiveness, Hazlewood has been integral to a few of the Australian bowling unit’s most destructive days. There was the first innings at Headingley in 2019, where Hazlewood’s 5-30 in concert with Cummins and James Pattinson saw England shot out for 67.
In December 2020, it was a Hazlewood tandem with Cummins that had India razed for a measly 36 in Adelaide. At his best, a bit like Reid or Glenn McGrath, Hazlewood does exactly the right amount with the ball to catch the edge, strike the pads or hit the stumps.
This is all to say that, in a year when winning Test series droughts in India (not since 2004) and England (2001) are on Australia’s radar either side of the World Test Championship final at the Oval, Hazlewood’s fitness will matter even more than usual.
He was a consistent performer in India in 2017, at a time when Starc and Cummins played only partial roles, and his 2019 Ashes performances closely shaded Cummins for fruitfulness with the Dukes ball. Speaking earlier this summer, Hazlewood was certainly eager not to find himself injured at another unfortunate juncture.
“It’s frustrating, definitely. I don’t feel like I’ve been injured much … it just happens to be at the wrong time of the year,” he said.
“The Test matches are so close together now.”
Most frustrating of all would be a scenario where Hazlewood, like Reid, found himself unable to traverse the full journey of 2023. It was the former Australian coach Bob Simpson who best quantified the full price of Reid’s infirmities.
“If he had stayed fit,” Simpson wrote in his book The Reasons Why, “there is no doubt at all that Australia would have been recognised as world champions two or three years before we were able to claim that position, simply because he was a great bowler, one of the finest bowlers I have ever seen.“
Hazlewood and Australia can only hope that the searching spells delivered at the SCG, after almost two full days of this Test were lost to rain, will be emblematic of his fortunes in 2023.
