Cummins, Hazlewood and Lyon return as Australia name their Bangladesh squad

Australia’s selectors have named a 13-man squad for next month’s two Tests against Bangladesh, and the headline is a familiar one: the quicks are back. Pat Cummins returns as captain, Josh Hazlewood is fit again after a year on the sidelines, and Nathan Lyon comes back from hamstring surgery. All three missed the last Test of the Ashes summer in Sydney.

The full squad

Cummins leads a group of Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Hazlewood, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Marnus Labuschagne, Lyon, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Jake Weatherald and Beau Webster. Michael Neser, Todd Murphy and Brendan Doggett are the three who drop out of the squad that played England earlier this year, and all three stay on standby.

Neser is the one who can feel hardest done by. He played three of the five Ashes Tests, including the last two, and did enough that his omission is a selection call rather than a formality. That is what happens when three bowlers of this standing all come good at once.

National selection chair George Bailey kept it simple. “The NSP look forward to the return of Pat, Josh and Nathan,” he said. “They have worked extremely hard over the past few months to return from their respective injuries.”

Boland is the awkward question

Hazlewood’s return creates the problem every side wants. Scott Boland played all five Ashes Tests alongside Starc and was excellent, and his career record now reads 82 wickets from 19 Tests at 18.59. Numbers like that do not usually belong to a bowler fighting for his place.

But Cummins, Hazlewood and Starc is the attack Australia have built the last five years around, and Lyon takes the spinner’s slot. Someone with a very good case is going to carry the drinks in Darwin. Australia have been here before, and it has rarely hurt them.

Elsewhere the batting looks settled. Weatherald keeps his place at the top after opening with Head through the Ashes, and Green is expected to slot in at No. 5 with Webster in the middle order alongside him.

A tour 23 years in the making

For Bangladesh this is a first trip to Australia since 2003. The scheduling is unusual too: the first Test starts in Darwin on August 13, the second in Mackay on August 22, which makes these the first Tests played in an Australian winter since 2004. Darwin last staged a Test in July 2004 against Sri Lanka. Mackay has never staged one at all.

The heat and the northern conditions may matter more than the calendar suggests. Neither venue offers the bounce Australia’s quicks feed on at the WACA or the Gabba, and two Tests in the tropics against a side that plays spin well is not the gentle warm-up the fixture list makes it look.

What it means for the WTC race

Both Tests count towards the 2025-27 World Test Championship, where Australia sit top of the table and Bangladesh fourth. For an Indian audience tracking the road to the next final, that matters: Australia have the chance to bank points at home while India face their own examination in Sri Lanka next month.

It is also the start of a punishing run. Australia play more than 20 Tests over the next 11 months, a stretch that finishes with the Ashes in England. Getting Cummins, Hazlewood and Lyon through that in one piece is the real project. Darwin and Mackay are where it starts.

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