Pattinson meets injury challenges side-on

James Pattinson is 25 years old and he is in love, has been for a while, and hopes to stay this way for at least another decade. Even if the thing he loves has broken him, made him feel "lonely", and even pushed him to tears. Fast bowling, it is not for the faint of heart.

It can be rewarding though. Pattinson's bowling average of 27.07 after 13 Tests is better than Wasim Akram's 27.43 or Dale Steyn's 30.33 at a corresponding time in their careers. He has 51 wickets presently, which means he has taken only three more Tests than Dennis Lillee to the mark. Talent? Check. But durability?

Pattinson had suffered two severe back injuries in the space of 10 months since the 2013 Ashes. In the course of correcting that, he tweaked his hamstring in 2015. In November 2012, there was a rib complaint so severe that he hadn't been able to breathe. Before that, he'd hurt his foot and didn't play another Test for three months. Far too much turbulence for a career only 13 matches old. So it was time for change, and Pattinson had to abandon a front-on action with which he has bowled all his life.

"I've spent probably the last couple of years trying to get a bit more side-on," he said. "Just to stop the counter rotation on my back, which stops the stress fractures [of the back] from reoccurring."

Pattinson has been working on the remodel at the National Cricket Centre in Brisbane, and has had help from Australia fast bowling coach Craig McDermott, Victoria bowling coach Mick Lewis and his junior coach Tim McCaskill.

"The thing is if you do change your action, when you go into games, you sort of still have it in the back of your mind. But I've come back this time and I haven't been thinking about my action. Everything is sort of second nature now," Pattinson said. "I think the hard thing is just taking your time. There are days where it can be really frustrating and you don't think it's working, but again you just have to know that in the end everything is going to be fine as long as you put in the work and then hopefully the results will come."

That doesn't mean there isn't any risk attached. Even the smallest changes to your action can bring about ripple effects. Steven Finn was asked to try a shorter run-up and that didn't work at all. Before he was forced to adjust his action, Saeed Ajmal was a world beater; now he is no longer part of the Pakistan side. In Pattinson's case, the concern is he might lose his natural outswing.

"It's obviously one of the things you're worried about when you change your action," he said. "But I still do a lot of work on getting my wrist in the right position. Being side-on just means I have to finish off a bit more, finish off means to get my wrist through towards where I want the ball to go."

If the man in the mirror has been causing problems, when Pattinson looks over his shoulder, too, he'll find hurdles to overcome with any number of young quicks gunning for a spot in the Australian team. With the Ashes lost, there are likely to be vacancies, but he can't afford to be anything but his best to squeeze his way in - Australia like their fast bowlers fast, so much that Peter Siddle was relegated once he couldn't summon enough pace and even the batting allrounder Mitchell Marsh bowls 140 kph.

Pattinson certainly fits the bill. In the A team tri-series currently underway in India on slow, placid decks, he and his reworked action have clocked up 145kph regularly and swung the new ball too. Good signs if the selectors are looking at him for the upcoming one-day series in England.

But his return has to be timed perfectly. "The first time I got injured after the Ashes in 2013, I probably rushed a little bit," Pattinson said. "I tried to change actions, but I only spent three months doing it. I came back and I thought I had changed a bit, but it was pretty much the same so I had a stress fracture a second time." That was in May 2014. He hasn't played international cricket since.

He was training with Pat Cummins at the time Ryan Harris retired from Test cricket and Australia needed a replacement, but wasn't in contention because his body wasn't at the level where it could handle the five-day game. He never wants that to happen again and has begun training smarter.

"Being a young fellow, I used to run in 100 percent all the time and try to bowl 150kph in the nets, but over the last couple of years I've sort of prepared my training sessions better. Like ramp it up for a few overs and then work on other things. So I'm actually not going 100 percent all the time in the nets.

"The way I prepare, my gym work, rehab, recovery and everything, that's all routine now. I'm doing the same thing to make sure my body adjusts to everything and nothing is outside of what my body knows, nothing is a bit of a shock to it."

There is also emphasis on a mental checklist to ensure his comfort. "You have your routines in your mind [while training], and knowing that you've ticked them off, you can go out on the field with a clear mind and you know that everything has been done off the field to perform on the field." That was a trick Pattinson learned from watching Ricky Ponting, he said, and he's one of those who rarely got injured.

Before that, Pattinson learnt from watching his big brother Darren bowl, and had been bowling the same way since he was 16 years old. Now he is realising continuing the same way could derail his career. Change was necessary, but will change be good?