This World Cup could be shaping as a mass swan song for a stack of Australian one-day greats, but not Josh Hazlewood.
The 32-year-old fast bowling veteran has declared he has no intention of retiring from 50-over cricket at the end of the ODI showpiece and is adamant he wants to continue playing all three formats.
There has been speculation that David Warner, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Hazlewood might all be playing 50-over cricket for the last time at the tournament starting in India on Thursday night, representing the end of an era for a group that famously led Australia to 2015 World Cup glory on home soil.
Part of the thinking has been that Australia’s big three quicks might look to shed a format to prolong their Test careers.
Also, Australia has often looked at its ODI selection in cycles with a view to picking players who will be there for the next World Cup.
However, Hazlewood, at least, isn’t seeing this World Cup as the end and has indicated that continuing in all three formats actually helps him maintain his equilibrium as one of the world’s greatest wicket-takers.
“I still feel like I want to play all three formats,” Hazlewood told this masthead.
“It’s easy to say now, I guess. But after the World Cup, I think I’ll still feel the same.
“And after the T20 World Cup (next year), (I think I’ll) still feel the same.
“Sometimes it’s easier just to keep going along and playing all the formats and keeping in rhythm and getting your bowling up to scratch and learning new tricks in different formats to then (transfer) to other formats.”
Hazlewood has had his fair share of injury problems over the past two years which has limited his Test cricket, but the big right-armer doesn’t believe cutting back on the amount of cricket he’s playing is the solution.
“Obviously if you just play one format there’s big breaks. There’s building up again and getting ready and I always like being bowling and maintaining that level of fitness through playing,” Hazlewood said.
“It’s obviously a lot of time on the road and there are times when you need to recover and rest and maybe miss a three-match series here or there in different countries, but overall I think I still have that appetite to play all three.”
Hazlewood is the world’s No.2 ranked ODI bowler and Australia’s No.1 and the good news is he feels as though confidence in his body has been restored by powering through the Ashes tour without any fitness issues, having missed the Indian Test series earlier this year with an Achilles problem.
“Yeah I have. First game was hard work. I still didn’t have those miles in the legs. But as the (Ashes) series went on I felt a lot more confidence out there and getting that confidence of bowling back-to-back spells, back-to-back days and back-to-back games,” Hazlewood said.
“It’s just building that workload up again and everything feels in a really good place.”
This will almost certainly be Warner’s swan song in one-day cricket given he intends to retire from Test cricket after the Sydney Test.
Although he would still be a key part of Australia’s tilt at next year’s T20 World Cup.
Starc is 33 years of age and has always said longevity playing Test cricket will be his No.1 motivation when it comes to deciding on whether or not to shed formats.
However, Starc is one of the greatest white ball bowlers of the modern era and it’s not certain he will hang up the boots in 50-over cricket after this World Cup.
Starc has already revealed he’s signing up for next year’s Indian Premier League competition for the first time in nearly a decade.
The feeling is Cummins will at the very least step down from the ODI captaincy after this World Cup.
Cummins is only 30, but has scarcely played much ODI cricket over the past couple of years anyway, and given his importance to Australia’s Test future might feel he’s better served focusing on Tests and T20s.
