“Everything’s going to plan,” Hazlewood told ESPNcricinfo. “We took a few extra weeks once we couldn’t make the Test matches. I had a couple of bowls off the half-run last week. Running’s going well, all the strength stuff’s going well so, yeah, on track.”
Since the 2020-21 season, when Hazlewood played all four Tests against India, he has only completed one home summer without injury. That came as part of an unbroken ten-Test stretch between the middle of 2023 during the Ashes and the start of the 2024-25 India series, which was then curtailed by calf and side strains. Prior to this summer, Hazlewood played four Tests in a month during the winter with the World Test Championship final followed by three in the West Indies.
Hazlewood has previously spoken about working with medical staff to investigate whether there are any common factors in his injuries, particularly side problems, but has put down the recent hamstring strain to bad luck, while adding the Achilles problem was more around broader ankle niggles he had been managing.
“My gym and everything is still mostly the same, but I think purely from a bowling workload, leading into the next red-ball game, do as much as we can in terms of just dicing it up a little bit differently”
Josh Hazlewood
He had been in prime form during the white-ball matches against India in October before picking up the hamstring injury having bowled on three consecutive days of the Sheffield Shield match against Victoria at the SCG. However, he may still look at modifying his training approach when he next prepares for red-ball cricket, which will likely come ahead of the Tests against Bangladesh in August.
“Sometimes, when one thing goes and the other thing resurfaces,” Hazlewood said of the back-to-back injuries this season. “But it [the ankle] was probably another thing I’d been just managing over the last few years, and then it just creeps up. I guess when you start back up, sometimes your body doesn’t like that stopping and getting it going [again]. So probably not as much of a dive into these two little niggles.
“But we’re still working on implementing training a different way a little bit. My gym and everything is still mostly the same, but I think purely from a bowling workload, leading into the next red-ball game, do as much as we can in terms of just dicing it up a little bit differently. Potentially bowling two or three days in a row and then having four or five days off and then doing that again, rather than Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.”
The five Tests in India next January may provide a natural opportunity to rest and rotate quick bowlers if conditions lend themselves to spin-heavy attacks. Hazlewood has yet to sit down and map out what that intense stretch of games could look like for him, but said it was tough to make plans too far out for Tests because of the uncertainty over workloads.
“[With] white ball, you can really sit down and nut it out because you know you’re involved for four or ten overs pretty much,” he said. “But Test matches are more like, okay, if it’s like a Perth or Melbourne Test, then you are fine to bowl in the next Test, but if it’s like a Sydney Test, where Barrell [Scott Boland] bowled 50 overs, then that’s a different story. With the red ball, it is a bit more on the run. You can map out the way you want to train to get ready for that first one, but I think once the Tests start then it’s sort of play it by ear and have those conversations on the go.
“I feel young in that attack,” Hazlewood, who turned 35 in early January, joked. “[But] I’m certainly realistic. I still think the hardest hurdle for me is the first one. So if you get over that first one, things can roll on. But if you play too many in a row, obviously weakness starts to creep in. So if you sort of sense that coming, yes, you might have to sit one out.”
Andrew McGlashan is a deputy editor at ESPNcricinfo
