Australia balance workload in busy summer
Scott Bailey |
Australia’s medical staff insist they have the right build-up to Test summers for their bowlers despite the early absence of Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins because of injuries.
Hazlewood will miss his second straight Test in Brisbane against South Africa with a side strain, while Cummins is preparing to return from his own quad injury.
Australia’s summer schedule meant none of the frontline quicks played four-day Sheffield Shield games before the Tests, instead featuring in the Twenty20 World Cup and England ODI series.
The program for the next four years means Shield cricket for multi-format players will remain rare, with white-ball matches in the lead up to each Test summer.
However, Australia’s physio Nick Jones said the tiered step from T20 cricket to ODIs and then Test matches meant bowlers were properly conditioned.
“If you are going to play T20s and the ODIs and the Test series as well, there is going to be a natural progression,” he said.
“We are comfortable from a schedule perspective that if you are going to be an all-format player, that is the way we have to build them at the moment.”
Jones claimed players would have been at a higher risk of injury if they skipped the ODI series against England and instead played Sheffield Shield straight out of the T20 World Cup.
“If we had put (Hazlewood) in a Shield game without playing the ODIs, we would’ve had an even bigger spike in loads,” Jones said.
“So we were able to use the ODIs with the extra few weeks we had to try and smooth that out a little.
“Obviously for each bowler, some will cope and Josh has had a minor issue we’ve had to manage.”
Australia’s current summer schedule is the busiest in their history, with 27 men’s international fixtures and no more than a four-day gap built between the five Tests.
“The reality is your ability to recover fully, it’s not going to be complete,” Jones said.
“We’ve got be very diligent with how we look after the guys between matches at the end of a day’s play.”
AAP
