Cameron Green: Australia all-rounder on chronic kidney condition and Ashes preparations

Whoever stumped up the cash, Green’s arrival is mutually beneficial.

Gloucestershire get a player Australia hope will be a fixture in their XI for a generation.

Green gets competitive cricket in England and a chance to prove his form and fitness before the World Test Championship final against South Africa at Lord’s in June.

He will not bowl during his county stint, instead playing solely as a batter as Australia carefully manage his return given the year to come.

“It is probably working backwards from the Ashes,” he says.

“That is the plan. There is not a whole lot of cricket between July and the Ashes so they just thought ‘give you an extra couple of months rest’.

“There is no real rush to get back.”

Green admits his first taste of playing in England was a “learning experience”. He scored 103 runs and took five wickets in the drawn 2023 Ashes and by the end of the series had lost his place to Mitchell Marsh.

There is a reason Green excites the Australian hierarchy in a way few others ever have, however.

At his best he is a genuine fast-bowling all-rounder, something Australia has long craved.

You have to go back to Keith Miller or Richie Benaud, whose careers followed World War Two, for the last truly great Aussie all-rounder.

In that time, England have produced three icons in Ian Botham, Andrew Flintoff and Ben Stokes.

“The Australian public have a really high expectation on their cricketers and see their all-rounders as having to perform in both,” Green says.

“You look at someone like Shane Watson. He had an incredible career but is not put in the same category as others.

“The public expects you to average 40 with the bat and 30 with the ball to be considered elite, even though that is elite and almost unattainable.”

At present, Green’s statistics stand outside of that – an average of 36.23 with the bat and 35.31 as a bowler – although they are not dissimilar to Stokes’.

In his last Test series before the injury he scored 174 not out against New Zealand, batting at number four with Steve Smith pushed up to open to accommodate him.

The Smith-opener experiment has since been shelved and a log-jam created in the middle order after impressive debuts by Josh Inglis and Beau Webster, who will fight for spots alongside Smith, Travis Head and Marsh.

It leaves Green with work to do to get back into the XI for the Test final and then the Ashes, which begins in his home city on 21 November.

“I am just here trying to perform as well as I can every game,” Green says. “I am grateful for every chance I get at an Ashes or any Test, to be honest.

“Maybe that is a difference between Australia and here.

“Two years before they were going to play in Australia, they were already talking about it.

“I feel like that is a little bit draining. You have got to stay pretty present.”

It is little surprise Green can keep perspective better than most.