For the last five years, Australia’s bowling attack has been a given. Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Nathan Lyon, set and forget. There have been change-ups to cover injury or when a second spinner has been needed in Asia, but there has been no question about the best four options in the country when the time has come to revert. With this stability, the quartet has played 22 Test matches together, a record shared with the West Indies’ 1950s and 60s combination of Garfield Sobers, Lance Gibbs, Charlie Griffith and Wes Hall.
The fact that 22 is the record gives a sense of how hard it is to keep a full bowling attack fit and firing over time. Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath played 47 times with Jason Gillespie and 38 times with Brett Lee, but only 16 times with both. James Anderson and Stuart Broad played 47 times with Graeme Swann without a regular fourth partner. Jacques Kallis and Shaun Pollock played 30 matches or more with Allan Donald and later Makhaya Ntini, but these always involved a range of all-rounders and no regular fourth specialist. Sobers was an all-rounder in that West Indies team, but bowled as one of only four frontline options, offering pace and spin.
