Back scare keeps Cummins out of A tour

Patrick Cummins, the promising New South Wales pace bowler, has been ruled out of the Australia A tour of Zimbabwe due to a back injury. Though Cummins has avoided the more lasting problems of stress fractures, it is a further blow to Australian pace bowling stocks that have taken hit after hit over the past 18 months as a succession of young bowlers succumbed to ailments.

The injury adds Cummins to a list that has included Josh Hazlewood, Ryan Harris, Ben Cutting, Ben Hilfenhaus, Peter Siddle, Burt Cockley, Doug Bollinger, Mitchell Starc and Clint McKay. Following a debut season for the Blues in which he startled many batsmen with his sustained speed, bounce and movement, 18-year-old Cummins complained of discomfort in his lower back, and examinations showed up a strain.

Greg Chappell, the national selector, said Cummins was still "two or three" years away from maturity as a bowler and a man, but did not rule out Australian duty for him in the intervening years.

"We know that young bowlers are vulnerable until their bones mature. We'll have to be very careful with him," Chappell told ESPNcricinfo. "The advice we were given was that it would probably be too early for him to go to Zimbabwe and give it another couple of months it gives him a chance to recover from the soreness and also start building that body up.

"He's going to need two or three really good pre-seasons in him before we could expect him to be at his full strength and fitness, but we also see him as someone we could possibly use in that intervening period, so we've got to give him the best opportunity to be right for the critical moments. Zimbabwe it wasn't important that we try to rush him to get him for that.

"We know he's right there, he's performed in first-class cricket, he's done well at that higher level so he has the potential to go the whole distance. But as with Hazlewood, [James] Pattinson, Starc, we're just going to have to be really conscious of that management process, albeit wanting to get as much bowling into them as they can so they gain experience and gain knowledge to help get them there faster."

Players and observers had marvelled at Cummins' ability at such a young age to keep hurling the ball down in lengthier spells than the brief bursts he was permitted in Twenty20 cricket, impressing particularly in the last two Sheffield Shield matches of the season.

Against Western Australia at the SCG he delivered one spell from around the wicket that seriously threatened the health of the two Warriors batsmen at the crease, while in the Shield final against Tasmania his fiery bursts were maintained over the course of a marathon bowling stint. Cummins' tally of overs for the match was a gargantuan 65, 48 of those in the first innings when he returned the figures of 3 for 118.

Brett Lee, who fought a lengthy battle with an elbow problem to be fit in time for this year's World Cup, has said that fast bowlers should expect to get injured in their early years as part of learning how to manage their body.

"It is about making sure that guys are looked after and understand too that it is such an unnatural action, and not be put in a class where they think you've got to be rested and can only bowl a certain amount of balls," Lee said during the Indian Premier League. "Because you've got to be hardened as well for a fast bowler, you can't be put in the nets and be told you can only bowl 30 balls for that week and then see you next week type of thing.

"Your body and your bones have got to get used to that stress going through it. The old saying goes that through all the impact of bowling you get bone on bone and it creates a stronger platform to leverage off. If you haven't got that, your bones are soft and you haven't done the work, you can't expect to go bowling in the SCG nets at 130kph twice a week, then go into a Test match and try to bowl 150 clicks for five days straight - the jump is massive.

"It's a massive catch-22 [situation] because you've got to do the work but you've also got to be fresh somehow. I don't really know what the answer is but I think it comes down to the individual. As bowlers get older they definitely got to know their body a lot better. I certainly know now the stiffness that might be my legs, might be my elbow, might be my back, I just know its stiffness because I haven't bowled for a week or because I've bowled for 10 overs flat-out, it's been hot, it's been humid, you're dehydrated."

Cummins is on a modified training program as he recovers from the strain and hopes to join other scholars at Cricket Australia's Centre of Excellence in Brisbane later in the year. George Bailey, the Tasmania captain and leader of Australia A last winter, is also missing the tour due to his rehabilitation from surgery on his right shoulder