Australia: Ashes contenders miss out on central contracts

 Australia: Ashes contenders miss out on central contracts

There are only five established Test batsmen in the new list, including captain Michael Clarke and his deputy Shane Watson.

Elevated to the centrally contracted list are batsmen Ed Cowan and Phillip Hughes, who both look set to feature in this summer's Ashes, and Twenty20 captain George Bailey, who has been a one-day international regular for the past year but has yet to play a Test. Australia have announced their list of centrally contracted players for 2013-14 - with several recent Test players omitted from the 20-strong list.
National selector John Inverarity hinted that this summer's Ashes may come too soon for teenager Cummins - who has been restricted to only one Test appearance, in November 2011, because of various injuries.
"He's tracking well, the one thing we're certainly not going to do is rush him," explained Inverarity.
"He's working on three fronts. Firstly, he's working on rehabilitating his back injury and the second thing is he's doing a lot of strength and conditioning and fitness work.
The third thing, which he's doing a lot of work with [legendary Aussie pace bowler] Dennis Lillee on, is remodelling his action because his action had a lot of twists and turns in it.
 Jackson Bird, Moises Henriques, Usman Khawaja and Steve Smith were all in the Test squad india last month but have missed out on contracts.