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Six months ago, John Hastings was not in the top dozen 50-over quicks in Australia and his international career looked dead. Now his excellence in the ODI series against India could vault him into Australia’s World T20 squad.
It has been a remarkable turnaround for Hastings.
While he was plugging away in county cricket last winter, he faced a challenge just to get a game for Victoria in 50-over cricket, having averaged almost 50 with the ball for the Bushrangers across the previous two summers.
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But a spate of injuries to Australia’s quicks, coupled with the desire to rest several other pacemen, left Australia searching for an immediate replacement in their series against England in September.
Hastings was the nearest option, geographically, and so he made an unlikely comeback to international cricket, four years after his previous ODI appearance.
It looked like this comeback would be very short lived when in his first match, against England in Leeds, Hastings was hammered, conceding 0-56 from only 6.2 overs.
But the burly seamer displayed admirable resilience to star in the next match, snaring 3-21 from ten overs as Australia wrapped up the five-match series.
Even still, it looked as though that may well be Hastings’ last ODI for Australia. He was well down the pace pecking order, behind the likes of Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Johnson, Josh Hazlewood, James Faulkner, Pat Cummins, Nathan Coulter-Nile, James Pattinson, Kane Richardson and Jason Behrendorff.
Then, as this current series against India approached, Johnson retired, Starc, Cummins and Coulter-Nile were injured, and the selectors were trying to manage the workloads of Hazlewood, Pattinson and Behrendorff.
Suddenly, generous opportunities opened up for limited-overs pacemen. Even still, Hastings wasn’t at the front of the queue, with uncapped quicks Scott Boland and Joel Paris selected ahead of him in the ODI squad for the series against India.
It wasn’t until the selectors decided to give Mitch Marsh a rest that Hastings was called up into the squad. While Boland and Paris had no impact in the series, with combined figures of 2-352, Hastings was the standout paceman from either team.
In a series on the flattest of pitches which was dominated by the bat, his return of ten wickets at 21 was outstanding. Hastings consistently hit a testing line and length and extracted from the dead pitches bounce which others couldn’t find.
He also, quite crucially, has added a yard of pace since his last stint in the national setup in 2011 and 2012. When Hastings debuted in Tests for Australia late in 2012, he was a medium pacer, with an average speed of 129km/h and a top speed of 135km/h in that match.
By comparison, in the ODIs against India he pushed the speed gun above 140km/h in every game (as high as 144km/h) and averaged 134km/h.
He has gone from looking like a handy fourth seamer, whose solid batting rounded out his game, to being a genuine frontline quick worthy of taking the new ball.
Whether he can hold on to his spot once Starc, Hazlewood, Cummins, Coulter-Nile and Behrendorff are all in the mix, who knows?
But he has seized his opportunity and given himself a great chance of making Australia’s World T20 squad. Hastings is in the Australian T20 squad for the three-match series starting in Adelaide tomorrow.
The other frontline pacemen in that squad are tearaway Shaun Tait, short form specialist Andrew Tye, the highly skilled Kane Richardson, and Boland, whose stocks have nosedived following a very poor debut ODI series.
The key advantage Hastings has over all of those quicks is his powerful striking with the blade.
So impressive was Hastings with the ball in the ODI series that he probably just needs to be solid in these T20s to book his World T20 berth. He has one foot on the plane to India.