Lyon is 38, Smith 37, Starc 36, and Australia are still the standard of world cricket. That is not an accident but an excellent system.
Australia protect their players better than any board in the game, and the proof is the oldest core in cricket still sitting at the top of it. Here are few reasons how:
Firstly Workloads are guarded ruthlessly: if Starc has just carried a Test series, he is rested from the meaningless bilateral that follows, and the same goes for Cummins and Hazlewood. You will not find their frontline names dragged through fixtures that matter to nobody. Injuries are treated the same way. Nobody comes back half-healed, even when the price is enormous, Hazlewood and the 2019 World Cup, Cummins and the 2026 one. Australia keep choosing the career over the tournament, and the careers keep lasting twenty years.
Secondly, human side is where they truly separate. Cameron Green was born with chronic kidney disease, something he has spoken about openly, and the system built a superstar’s career around that reality rather than in spite of it. Scott Boland was kept in the fold until 32, handed a Boxing Day debut at the MCG, and took 6 for 7, a fairy tale that only exists because someone kept faith with a domestic grinder. The sandpaper saga drew fury from the whole world, and Australia still ran it better than almost any board would have: punishment, rehabilitation, reintegration, and both men returned as greats. And when the ICC reprimanded Usman Khawaja over an armband saying all lives are equal, his captain stood in front of the cameras and said, I support him. That is what backing a player actually means.
Now the flip side, because it is coming. Beyond Green, virtually the entire core is 32 or older, and something close to ten of the eleven could walk away inside the same short window. When that wave breaks, Australia will face one of the harshest transitions any modern Test giant has known, and the next few years will test whether the management that built this era can survive the end of it.
My money says the plan already exists. That is rather the point of the whole system.
Right before the England vs Argentina semi-final, Twitter was flooded by Brit accounts with edits of the Falklands War featuring the iconic opening riff of Dire Straits' Money for Nothing.
Revisted Brothers in Arms a few days later. 10/10 album by a 10/10 band.