Australia's Awesome Foursome among the best in Test history

They have 1508 Test wickets among them. Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon are among the finest bowling combinations that has played together in Test history.

In 2024, Australia became the first team to field an attack with four bowlers having 250 Test wickets each when Hazlewood removed Alick Athanaze in Adelaide. At some point this year, they may field an attack where four of them have at least 300 wickets.

Cummins needs just six to reach the milestone - he could well do that in the World Test Championship (WTC) final - while Hazlewood is 21 away, so the Ashes is perhaps more realistic for him. Starc is well past 300 and is 18 away from joining the 400 club. Lyon sits on 553 and is 11 away from becoming Australia's second-highest wicket-taker of all time behind Shane Warne. For the record, the most Test wickets in an XI was the 1989 England had against Australia at The Oval in 2023.

Barring late injury problems, the four of them are set to line up against South Africa at Lord's - the 33rd time they will have done so, a mark of their longevity - where Australia will aim to defend their WTC title.

Debates around the greatest Test attacks of all time need to be more nuanced - another Australian combination of Glenn McGrath, Brett Lee, Jason Gillespie and Warne often pips the current generation when the topic is raised even before expanding it to other nations - and there are duos and trios that has carried teams to fantastic heights. But this quartet has earned the right to be in the conversation, and perhaps will only truly be appreciated once the alliance starts to permanently break apart.

Australia certainly haven't been unbeatable when they have joined forces, with eight defeats scattered among the 32 Tests to date and South Africa winners on two occasions in 2018. For comparison, the McGrath-Lee-Gillespie-Warne combination played 16 Tests together for ten wins, four draws and two losses. A great West Indian quartet of Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Colin Croft were on the field together 11 times and lost once. The South Africa team that included Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, Vernon Philander and Jacques Kallis lost just two of 18 Tests. There will be various other noteworthy combinations, but each of Australia's four has a vast body of work that will stand the test of time.

Cummins is a supreme specimen of a fast bowler. Pitch off, hit off is one of his trademarks - Joe Root at Old Trafford in 2019 is never far from getting a run. Of bowlers with at least 250 wickets, only eight have got them at a lower average than Cummins. It is worth noting here that one of those, Kagiso Rababa, will be in the opposition at Lord's. Cummins has also been a success story for fast-bowler captains; two WTC titles and an ODI World Cup would be quite the haul.

Starc's standing is a curious one. It sometimes feels he isn't revered as much as he should be. He is, without doubt, a cross-format great while anyone capable of touching 400 Test wickets should be viewed among the highest echelon of players. When he reaches 100 Tests, which could come in Jamaica next month, he will be just the eighth fast bowler to hit that mark alongside 400 wickets.

If things had fallen a little differently for Hazlewood, he would now be beyond 300 wickets. A run of injuries (and some spin-heavy selections on the subcontinent) meant he played just four Tests between 2021 and 2023. After stringing together ten in a row in 2023-24, injuries returned to hamper him last season against India. His Test average of 24.57 is at its lowest point since March 2017 when he played his 28th match.

Then there's Lyon, so often the glue that has held it all together for Australia from a bowling point of view. Before Australia returned to consistently playing an allrounder, when Cameron Green was first part of the side in 2020, Lyon's ability to command a huge workload, while being both an attacking and defensive option, made the four-man attack work and it's still often a role he carries. Since Lyon's debut in 2011, no one has bowled more than his 34,103 deliveries in Test cricket.

But there is a transition looming in the years to come, although no one is yet being pensioned off and the mega year of 2027 (including India and England away) remains a significant carrot.

Cummins is the youngest of the four at 32 - and is expected to lead the Test side through to 2027 - followed by Hazlewood (34), Starc (35) and Lyon (37). The first reserve, one of the best back-ups there has been in Scott Boland, is 36. A few more of the next rung are more experienced players, too, with Michael Neser 35 and Sean Abbott 33. Jhye Richardson (28) and Lance Morris (27) have fitness question marks over them. Brendan Doggett bridges the gap at 31. Fergus O'Neill's domestic returns demand he is in the mix, and he has the makings of the next Boland, but may still have to fight perceptions around his pace. The recent Under-19 generation - led by Mahli Beardman and Callum Vidler - is very exciting but will need to be nurtured.

Australia's spin depth is as good as it's been for some time - Matt Kuhnemann may again join forces with Lyon in the West Indies, while Todd Murphy and Corey Rocchiccioli are the next offspinners in line - but filling this void when the time comes could be the hardest one, as it was when Warne retired. There was a glimpse into that future during the 2023 Ashes when Lyon blew his calf at Lord's. While Murphy held his own, particularly at The Oval, it was not the same and Australia even opted not to play a spinner at Old Trafford.

"Our bowlers aren't getting any younger," head coach Andrew McDonald said in an answer specifically on the quicks before leaving for the WTC final. "So the ability for those four [Starc, Cummins, Hazlewood, Boland] to really coexist and manage the workload across the WTC in the West Indies, and then you've got coming back for an Ashes as well, a five-Test series...

"The way that the bowlers were able to perform last year, in particular, Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc getting through five Test matches, we keep saying it's an outlier, but they keep doing it. I don't think we can always bank on that.

"So that quartet, plus Michael Neser, Sean Abbott, Brendan Doggett, we've got some real good depth coming in and around that. We've also got Jhye Richardson and Lance Morris waiting in the wings as well. We feel like [with those] the fast-bowling stocks, when that does shift on us, we're well placed."

Rotation is a dirty word among the pace attack - "we field the same question every year: if you're fit, you play and if you're not, you don't play. It's as simple as that, no one rests a Test match," Hazlewood said last season - but it's a topic that is unlikely to go away. Australia have dipped their toe in that water, most recently at the 2023 Ashes where Hazlewood, counter to his own views on the topic, sat out the Headingley Test.

The other part to this is, ideally, wanting a managed change of eras rather than a mass exodus. There was a glimpse of such a prospect at the Champions Trophy earlier this year when the big three quicks were all absent. There may be a temptation, however tough a sell it would be to the current group, to try and get a Test match or two into the next batch of pace bowlers. One of the fascinating challenges of elite team sport is moving between the generations and it will be an intriguing element, not just in the bowling, of an outstanding but ageing Australian team.

But there is also the here and now, and that's about Lord's against South Africa. Cummins, Starc, Hazlewood and Lyon have never featured in a title-winning XI together: Hazlewood missed the previous WTC final while Lyon wasn't involved in the 2023 ODI World Cup or the 2021 T20 version. As events in recent years against India in Perth and West Indies in Brisbane have shown, having them together is no guarantee of victory, but they are an intimidating prospect to overcome.