Australia’s elite quartet: The unrivaled legacy and what lies ahead

For all the legendary bowling line-ups to have graced Test cricket, a current one is on the brink of achieving an historic - and perhaps unsurpassable - feat. Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon are in line to become the first quartet to play in a Test wherein each has 300-plus wickets to his name, with Hazlewood just five away from the mark.

As things stand, the four have 1610 Test wickets between them. When they last played together, over a year ago, the Australia line-up collectively had 1613 (including those by Cameron Green and part-timers). The record for most wickets by a team’s XI heading into a Test reads 1989. That was true for England before the Ashes decider at The Oval in 2023 - primarily due to James Anderson and Stuart Broad, with Broad calling it a day at the conclusion of the match.

Should Australia’s big four feature together in the next Ashes, they could get close to that number too, with ample Tests lined up till then - including the India tour early next year. Beyond those records and plain numbers however, their collective impact and the legacy warrants a deep dive.

For starters, in 35 matches played together, these four have bagged 567 wickets between them. No other quartet comes remotely close, the next best being 415. That they have collectively bagged 16.2 scalps per game is staggering to say the least. All four have done almost equal damage, just 16 wickets separating the highest (Cummins -150 ) and the lowest (Lyon - 134). Never before has there been a set wherein all four have bagged 75-plus wickets individually in matches played together (where all four have delivered at least one ball in every match played together).

Another telling stat is Australia’s win-loss ratio (2.444). Of Australia’s nine defeats across these games, five came against India, three against South Africa to go with West Indies’ historic one at the Gabba in 2024. Notably, Australia are yet to lose an Ashes Test in which the quartet all featured.

There are some notable absentees from this list, which shows just how rare it is for four bowlers to play a significant number of Tests together and have so much success.

It is worth pointing out that the famous West Indian attack that dominated Test cricket through the 1970s and 1980s is disadvantaged in this analysis by two factors: the fact that there were more than four superb fast bowlers available to them, and they played relatively fewer Tests compared to the modern era.

This should not detract from the achievements of the current Australian quartet though. It’s notable that the percentage of total team wickets they have taken across the 35 games played together reads 93.87% (excluding run-outs). This is impressive when compared to the quartets with a similar sample sizes in the table above, given that the third or fourth bowler in all others is either a genuine all-rounder or a part-timer.

Among the other notable quartets, Croft, Garner, Holding and Roberts accounted for 95.02% of the team's wickets in 11 Tests played together. That number shoots up to 97.82% when Croft is replaced by Marshall in the group, the four quicks bagging 90 out of 92 wickets (barring run-outs) in the six Tests.

Another standout stat that the Australians boast is that in their first series together - the Ashesin 2017/18 - all 87 wickets bagged by Australia bowlers were shared by the four: Cummins (23),Starc (22), Hazlewood (21) and Lyon (21). Never before or since, have four bowlers combined to bag all wickets by a team (excluding runouts) in a five-match Test series. There have been only two other instances of four different bowlers from the same team bagging 20 or more wickets in a Test series: Ian Bishop (27), Courtney Walsh (26), Kenny Benjamin (22) and Curtly Ambrose (21) on the 1995 England tour; and Stuart Clark (26), Shane Warne (23), Glenn McGrath (21) and Brett Lee (20) in Ashes 2006/07.

The other crucial point of comparison is almost identical numbers in home and away Tests. In 24 matches played at home together, the four have collectively averaged 25.2 while striking at 53.8. The corresponding numbers for the 11 away (and neutral) games read 27.4 and 53.3. Of the four, only Starc has a considerable dip in home average versus away (26.6 vs 32.75).

Even when looking at their overall careers in isolation, the difference in the home and away averages is on the lower side. The number (absolute values) reads 1.8 for Lyon, 2.11 for Starc, 3.52 for Hazlewood and 5.1 for Cummins. Among all the quartets mentioned above, there are only two which feature all four with 150-plus career wickets and a notably low difference in home and away averages: Warne (1.78), McGrath (1.62), Gillespie (2.53) and Lee (5.23); and Holding (0.11) Garner (2.6), Roberts (4.87) and Marshall (1.52).

There have been pace triplets who have been lethal on their own, including Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood. The three first united in the Ashes 2017/18 opener in Brisbane, after Cummins had made a comeback to the Test setup earlier that year, with 1940 days separating his debut and second appearance.

Australia’s trio have impressive numbers compared to most others in the above list. If we include pace troikas with a minimum of 200 wickets, the great West Indies pace attacks from the Seventies and Eighties are right there with them and the New Zealand trio of Trent Boult, Tim Southee and Neil Wagner in terms of average wickets bagged per match. West Indies won 16 out of 26 Tests in which Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner and Michael Holding featured together, losing just one (Sydney, 1984/85).

In terms of records that Australia’s seam trio are threatening, there is another one in their sights. This pertains to the number of wickets taken by a first-change seamer in Tests, where Cummins has every chance of overtaking Ian Botham and Morne Morkel.

Lyon currently is the sixth-highest wicket-taker in Tests (567), and only Starc has 400-plus scalps among active bowlers. The hallmark of his career has been his longevity: he is the only bowler with 100 consecutive Test appearances, the next best sequence among specialists is 60 for Anil Kumble. If we factor in all-rounders, it’s Garry Sobers (85), Kapil Dev (separate streaks of 66 and 65), Ian Botham (65) and Jacques Kallis (60).

No other Australian spinner has challenged his spot in the XI since he dismissed Kumar Sangakkara off the very first ball of his career at Galle in 2011. The only other one with 50-plus wickets post Shane Warne’s retirement is Nathan Hauritz (58), whose final appearance came in October 2010. Lyon has missed just 11 of the 152 Tests played by Australia since his debut, including the last three in Ashes 2023 (after he had suffered a calf tear at Lord’s) and the last two in the recent one at home.

This is in stark comparison to Rangana Herath in the 300-wickets club, who made his debut in September 1999 but only saw his career take off afterMuttiah Muralitharan’s retirement in 2010. 83.6% of Herath’s Test wickets came after Muralitharan’s final appearance.

Typical of a spinner, Lyon has superior numbers in the second innings, averaging 26.9 and striking at 55.7, compared to 33.17 and 66.6 respectively in the first. In the matches featuring all four of Australia’s quartet, it’s him leading the wickets tally in the third or fourth innings of a Test (76), featuring four five-wicket hauls, followed by Hazlewood (73), Cummins (59) and Starc (56). Lyon has sent down 711.1 overs in his 31 innings combined in the second dig across these games(roughly 23 overs per innings); none of the other three have bowled over 500.

It is worth noting that in addition to their brilliance in the longest version, Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood are the only specialist bowling trio to have won the final of the ODI World Cup (2023) as well as the T20 World Cup (2021). Adam Zampa, one of only three cricketers with 200-plus white-ball appearances but none in Tests (full-member teams), has long held the spin-bowling fort in ODIs and T20Is.

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