An ageing team? A crisis on the cards?

Nathan Hauritz

It may have been a popular refrain 12 months ago but predictions of Australia's impending decline don't really look like materialising right now.

More to the point, the legion of critics who pointed back then to an apparent lack of emerging Australian talent seem to have been decidedly out of order.

Tasmania's Shane Watson is already beginning to take great delight not only in dismantling such theories but also in providing the prospect that Australia may now have the kind of all-round asset it has not possessed in 40 years.

New South Wales batsman Michael Clarke, South Australian paceman Paul Rofe and Tasmanian wicketkeeper Sean Clingeleffer are others among a rising crop of youngsters who look destined for outstanding careers.

And, given that the most successful off spinner in the country's international history played his last match a century ago, it might be argued that the rapid development of Queensland's Nathan Hauritz bears as much significance as any.

Having just been included in a senior national squad for the first time in his career, Hauritz is about to embark on a journey that will see him join Watson and another 13 of his countrymen in South Africa and Zimbabwe for impending limited-overs tours.

And, while his base of only seven first-class and 16 domestic one-day games may seem a shallow pool of experience upon which to draw, he looks an outstanding selection. For he already carries with him a cool persona, resourceful skills as a lower order batsman, and a repertoire of deliveries that imply that the future of Australian slow bowling might well be in safe hands.

Right now, Hauritz offers living cricketing proof that a lot can happen in a short space of time. Quite apart from helping confound those expectations about Australian cricket's future, he has even surprised himself in bypassing the low-key introduction to elite level cricket that he had expected.

"Never in my wildest dreams had I thought about playing for Australia for about the next five years. Just to listen to it all (and) to take in the idea that people are talking about me playing for my country has been great, very exciting," said Hauritz to CricInfo earlier this season.

"But I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. Shane Warne only came on to the scene when he was around 23 and spinners always seem to mature later than other players."

"I'm conscious of the fact that Queensland generally hasn't produced a lot of top-line spin bowlers over the years as well."

Through it all, 20-year-old Hauritz still appears remarkably settled for a young cricketer. Particularly one coming off a stunning domestic limited-overs season that yielded 18 wickets at an average of 21.16 and culminated in a haul of 4/47 in last month's ING Cup Final.

Delightfully, he still regards himself, in his own words, as "a nobody" and as being very much in the midst of a journey of discovery.

"In the one-dayers with Queensland, I've found my role's been made fairly realistic for me and therefore reasonably simple to perform so far. I've needed to bowl accurately and at the stumps and change the pace. But I haven't really needed to spin the ball a lot in those games.

"My patience still needs to be improved; that's probably my biggest problem at the moment.

"In junior cricket, you tend to look at picking up a wicket every five or ten overs; when you get to this level, you're up against much better players and they just wait for the bad ball."

Though keen not to overplay his triumphs, Hauritz's list of accomplishments at junior level offers a powerful indication of what might await. Remarkably, he was a member of state underage sides in every year that followed his 12th birthday and he quickly became a regular in a range of Australian under-17, under-19 and development squads too.

He also enjoyed stints as the under-19 captain of both his state and his country, winning the respect and admiration of players, coaches and administrators alike with his acumen as a leader. Any spectator who witnessed the imaginative, attacking declaration that helped land Queensland an unexpected victory in the final of the national under-19 championships in 2000-01 is just as unlikely to have been left with anything but a favourable impression.

"Things took off once I made a Queensland under-13 team. The year before, I had an ok year but I didn't make the side I wanted to make. From then on, I guess it's kept going and going and going," he says of the developments that lie behind his graduation to a post at the head of a dynamic new pack of spinners in Australia.

"I think it's really good, really healthy, now that a lot of young spinners from similar age groups are all starting to break through into the first-class scene at around the same time.

"Obviously, there's a lot of focus on Cameron White because he's a leg spinner from Victoria but there are others like Xavier Doherty and Aaron O'Brien also starting to make their way into teams now.

"It's very exciting for the future of spin bowling in Australia."

Almost from the moment of his domestic debut at this time last year, Hauritz's approach has been all about building on his early successes. And making a seamless transition between youth and senior ranks in the shift away from the pinnacle of underage cricket toward the mountain that leads to international selection and potential stardom.

Also in focus has been the idea of adding a harder and more practical edge to his game. To help him, among other things, more easily find and beat the edge of the bat. Learning to outwit batsmen has been one of the primary areas of concentration; another has been imparting greater turn to his deliveries.

"During my junior career, I was never a big spinner of the ball. (Queensland coach) Bennett King said to me 'listen, it doesn't matter how accurate you are, you've got to be able to spin the ball when you get to the next level'.

"So I've been doing a lot of work on learning to spin the ball further. As well as keeping it accurate.

"This year is when that's all started to come together for me."

Over recent months, the reward for his toil has been reflected in his rise to the status of a permanent fixture in Queensland's first eleven. For the last fortnight, he has additionally been the owner of a much-coveted berth among the company of the nation's very best limited-overs players.

Like former state and national underage teammate Watson, the quietly-spoken Hauritz also owes his first appearance in a senior Australian squad to the foresight of his country's selection panel and its new, unshakable belief in youth.

Though the doomsayers' clarion cries may suggest he doesn't have it in him to make it to the top, it seems reasonable to assume that his talents will speak even more loudly than is hoped.

© 2002 CricInfo Ltd