News from Cricket Australia Towers regarding Pat Cummins is both saddening and unsurprising: he is out for the whole of the 2013/14 domestic season with a recurrence of a lower back stress fracture.

Many people are scratching their heads about how to deal with Cummins and are confused about whether he should be bowling more or less. It is pretty obvious that his problems started after (or indeed whilst) bowling 65 overs in the Shield final in March 2011. It is also pretty obvious that that was a woeful example of over bowling of a young and immature cricketer.

That does not mean he does not need more bowling however. That means before he was asked to bowl such a long series of spells he did not have enough bowling. I maintain that Cummins needs to have a season or two away from the international scene in domestic cricket to bowl more and to get his body ready for the rigours of international cricket. He is still young and still developing and yet every time he gets fit he is thrust straight back into the lions den. It is time for Cricket Australia to admit that his fast tracking is not working and it is time for a different approach to be taken.

One can only hope Cricket Australia is alive to this and implements a different approach. If they don’t then the name Pat Cummins could be consigned to the ranks of “might have been but for injury” all too soon.