Josh Hazlewood, the patient fast bowler Australia keeps underrating

Josh Hazlewood

Photo: NAPARAZZI / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	January 8, 1991 Tamworth
Occupation	Cricketer
Awards	ICC Emerging Cricketer of the Year · ICC Men's Cricket World Cup · ICC Men's T20 World Cup · Indian Premier League · ICC Test Team of the Year · ICC T20I Team of the Year

Josh Hazlewood does not do spectacle. He runs in, hits the same patch of pitch just short of a good length, moves the ball a fraction off the seam and does it again, and again, until the batter’s patience gives way before his does. It is the least photogenic method in fast bowling and one of the most dependable, and it has made him a hard kind of great to see: the third name in a pace attack whose other members, Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc, collect the captaincy and most of the headlines. People reach for Glenn McGrath when they describe him. His recent seasons have asked a blunter question: what is that patience worth to a team that has just shown it can win without it?

He comes from Bendemeer, a small country town in the New England region of New South Wales, about forty kilometres up the road from Tamworth, where he was born. The younger son of Trevor and Anne Hazlewood learned the game in fierce backyard contests with his older brother and was playing for Tamworth against grown men by the age of twelve. New South Wales picked him at seventeen, the youngest paceman ever to represent the state, and he was the youngest member of Australia’s squad at that year’s youth World Cup.

Born on 8 January 1991, he made his first-class debut at the Sydney Cricket Ground against New Zealand in November 2008 and played his first one-day international in June 2010, aged 19. The Test call took longer. When it came, at the Gabba against India in December 2014, he took five for 68 in his first innings, and within months he was part of the side that won the 2015 World Cup, taking four wickets against Pakistan in the quarter-final. In Adelaide that November, in the first day-night Test ever played, he took six for 70 and became the first player of the match under lights. The ICC named him its Emerging Cricketer of the Year.

The years that followed built the reputation his teammates, who call him Hoff, still describe in terms of control. He topped the ICC one-day bowling rankings around the 2017 Champions Trophy, took 20 wickets at 21.85 in four Tests of the 2019 Ashes in England, and passed 200 Test wickets against India in the opening match of the 2020-21 Border-Gavaskar Trophy. After the 2021 T20 World Cup, won by Australia with Hazlewood taking three for 16 in the final against New Zealand, he became the first bowler ranked in the top ten of all three formats at once. When the 2018 ball-tampering scandal stripped Steve Smith and David Warner of the leadership, he was made Test vice-captain, and in November 2022, with Cummins rested, he captained Australia in a one-day international against England.

Finals are where the method looks most like a gift. By cricket.com.au’s count he has now won ten white-ball finals, from the Sydney Sixers’ Champions League title in 2012 to the 2023 World Cup in Ahmedabad. Three of them are IPL titles: with Chennai Super Kings in 2021 and with Royal Challengers Bengaluru, who signed him for 7.75 crore rupees in 2022, in 2025, when they ended an 18-year wait, and again in 2026. In that last final, against Gujarat Titans in front of more than 100,000 people, he removed Shubman Gill with his second ball and finished with two for 37. “That was right up there,” he said.

The less comfortable part of the story is his body, and what Australia learned while it was failing him. Hazlewood played only the first Test of the 2021-22 Ashes. Before the 2025-26 home Ashes he was, by cricket.com.au’s reckoning, in better form than any other Australian bowler; then a hamstring strain in the last Sheffield Shield match before Perth, followed by a separate problem low in the calf near the Achilles, kept him out of all five Tests. Scott Boland played every one of them, and Australia won the series 4-1. The same trouble cost him the 2026 T20 World Cup. For a fast bowler in his mid-thirties, that is the quiet danger: being shown to be unnecessary. He has done little to court the public that might argue his case. He stays off social media, joking that he is “probably missing out on free stuff here and there”, and when asked about the months of rehab he said simply: “Cricket’s my job. It’s my job to do rehab and try and get back fit.” Reticence has kept him sane through a long career. It has also left the argument for his greatness to other people.

The return began in Darwin in August 2026, his first Test in 12 months, picked ahead of Boland. He took his 300th Test wicket there, Mehidy Hasan Miraz, becoming the ninth Australian to reach the mark, and finished with six for 89 from 28 overs, his best return in a decade. “I’m still standing,” he said at stumps. It did not save the match: Bangladesh won by nine wickets, their first Test victory in Australia. Two months later, in Durban, in the oldest Test XI Australia has ever fielded, he gave the louder answer. On the final day at Kingsmead, with South Africa batting to survive, he took six for 49, the best figures of his Test career, including two wickets in one over with the second new ball, as the home side lost their last four wickets for five runs. Australia won by 214 runs.

After the lost Ashes summer he had said he meant to keep playing all three formats. “My body still feels as strong as ever,” he said then. “It’s just little things here and there that creep in.” The second Test of the series, in Gqeberha, was still being played when this profile was published, and the third begins at Newlands in Cape Town on 27 October. Durban settled something narrower than a legacy and more useful to him: at 35, the patience still works, and Australia still wants it.

Tags: sports, athletes, cricketers, Josh Hazlewood, Australia national cricket team, Pat Cummins, The Ashes