Australian Mitchell Starc has already suffered career-interrupting injuries in his short career so far.

By Greg Chappell/The Guardian

In the words of the late American writer and philosopher Philip K Dick, “reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away”. Reality for fast bowlers is that they will spend an infinite amount of time suffering, or recovering from, injury during their career.
Pat Cummins is the latest of a long line of Australian fast bowlers to have gone down with a crippling injury - not the first serious back injury of his career. Many of his predecessors, such as Dennis Lillee, Brett Lee and Mitchell Johnson, have experienced extended periods on the sidelines in their formative years while his current fast bowling peers Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and James Pattinson have all suffered career-interrupting injuries in recent times.
In my early years, I dreamt of opening the batting and the bowling for Australia in a Test match. Sadly for me I was the youngest and shortest boy in any team in which I played so I settled on leg spin during my teenage years before returning to seamers as an adult. Fortunately, it dawned on me early that my body was not designed to bowl fast (slim body and no fast-twitch fibres will do that to you), so I accepted that medium pace was all I was ever going to be. It was then that I decided I had to make it as a batsman if I wanted to play Test cricket.
In hindsight, I realise how fortunate I was - the role of a fast bowler is synonymous with injury and it was when Lillee broke down with stress fractures of his back on the 1973 Tour of the West Indies that it really dawned on me how lucky I had been that my father taught me how to bat.
Lillee spent six months in a body cast from his waist to his armpits and then another 12 months playing as a batsman in club cricket while he rebuilt his body and his action.
Most young bowlers I knew at the time had some sort of back injury as they grew up, but eventually, those who persevered, grew out of it.
Why does it seem that more fast bowlers are breaking down these days?  The easy answer is to point out that there is more cricket played - three different formats played the year round, every year - but can it be that simple?
The fact that bowlers had an off-season in years gone by was no doubt a blessing, as was the fact that they had to work for a living so they weren’t training every day during the season. Most of their fitness came from bowling and extra running sessions. Very little, if any, was done in the gym.
There is no such luxury of an off-season in the modern game, so bowlers don’t get time to recover from injury without losing a lot of playing time.
Cummins has been diagnosed with a stress fracture for the second time in his short international career. He will spend another frustrating few months on the sidelines as he rebuilds his back to withstand the rigours of bowling at pace.
As someone who has been involved in the development phase of Australian cricket for the past seven years, I am privy to much of the research that has been undertaken on how best to protect bowlers from injury in their formative years.
Australia is one of the leaders in this field of research and while the incidence of fast bowling injuries in Australia has been reduced from 27% to 15% per annum, it is still disappointing when a talented bowler like Cummins is afflicted.
Of the best fast bowlers to have represented Australia in the past 50 years, only Graham McKenzie, Jeff Thomson and Craig McDermott have avoided losing time to back-related stress injuries. History suggests that these players, along with the likes of Courtney Walsh, Dale Steyn, Wasim Akram and Michael Holding, are the outliers. Genetics play their part as does one’s action. Muscles can be built up but bones develop in their own good time.
The latest wisdom is that, to prevent injury, a bowler must increase their chronic load (number of balls bowled) in training to the level at which they will be bowling in games. A 50% spike over that chronic load in games can be managed, but much over that will put a developing body under strain and it is likely to break.
Despite the best-laid plans, bowlers will be at risk up to the point at which their bones mature which, in most cases, is around the age of 24 (Cummins is 22). Until that time, those that bowl at the upper end of the scale are going to put incredible stress on their frame and they are going to have to accept that injury comes with the territory. Those that develop their pace from the ground up by using the big muscles from the legs upwards are likely to have fewer problems than those who use considerable upper body rotation to generate exceptional pace. Most of those who have stress injuries are in the second category.
The reality for the modern selector is that, if they wish to retain their sanity, they will need to plan and prepare by having a bank of fast bowlers of varying ages primed and ready to meet the constant demands of the modern game.