Former Australia quick James Pattinson has taken a swipe at Cricket Australia over its management of his body as a young tearaway, recalling the pitfalls that derailed his Test career and highlighting “the blueprint” to be followed.
The 31-year-old right-arm pace bowler, speaking publicly for the first time since retiring from Test cricket in October, was clearly frustrated as he reflected on a career that yielded 81 wickets from 21 Tests but promised so much more.
Pattinson took 25 wickets, including two five-wicket hauls, as a 21-year-old over the first four Tests of his career, during Australia’s 2011-12 summer.
The Victorian had already played several T20 and one-day internationals and, after a gruelling 19 months on the international and domestic scenes, his body broke down.
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“I was put in a position where I was a bit ahead of my body being thrown into the Test arena at that stage and, doing well, I went from not playing to almost being the lead bowler within four or five Test matches,” Pattinson said.
“So that was the hardest thing, and my body wasn’t ready for that… It probably has contributed to my back being the way it is and having to go and get surgery.”
While the rise of the brilliant NSW spearheads – Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood – the 2013 homework fiasco and ailing form were all responsible for Pattinson’s stop-start Test career, his greatest challenge was his body.
He took a gamble on a spinal-fusion surgery in November 2017 and, astoundingly, returned from that to play another four Tests across 2019 and 2020.
Pattinson was likely to be picked in Australia’s Ashes squad for the 2021-22 summer, as support for Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood, but he was having trouble with a knee and called time on his Test career, dashing his chances.
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Pattinson pointed to Cricket Australia’s management of Cummins as the right way to oversee a young fast bowler.
The right-armer famously bagged a six-wicket haul as an 18-year-old on his Test debut, against the Proteas in South Africa in November 2011.
But a meticulously planned high-performance program, as well as a spate of injuries, meant he wouldn’t play his second Test until March 2017.
Just over four years later, at the age of 28, Cummins has taken 164 wickets from 34 Tests at the sparkling average of 21.59. He’s now also the top-ranked Test bowler in the world in the International Cricket Council’s rankings.
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“They’ve changed the way they manage players a little bit with Patty Cummins, who came onto the scene and then played a lot of one-day cricket,” Pattinson said.
“So he built his resilience up through playing one-day cricket, still getting that intensity.
“The way they’ve handled Pat Cummins is the blueprint of how you handle your bowlers now.”