It's not easy being Cameron Green. Australia's star allrounder has lost his place in the ODI side in just the second game of the World Cup, less than three months after losing his spot in the Test side for the final match of the Ashes series.
It is far from doom and gloom for a player as young and gifted as Green. He could well play in Australia's next World Cup match against Sri Lanka given the schedule and the tenuous fitness of Marcus Stoinis. Stoinis has been unavailable for Australia's last five matches, including the two warm-up games, due to a hamstring problem and has not bowled in back-to-back internationals this year. If Green were to regain his place, he could still have an impact for Australia in the tournament.
But it is worth noting how Green has gone from almost irreplaceable in all three of Australia's sides at the start of the year, and a three-million dollar man in the IPL, to being left out of the team on form in a deciding Ashes Test and the second game of a World Cup.
It is clear Green is physically and mentally exhausted. No player in Australia's World Cup squad has spent more time away from home this year than Green. Since Australia's Test group departed for India on January 31, Green has spent just a month in his own bed. That is the price of being a three-format international allrounder, and it's something Green is going through for the first time over such a sustained period.
But for a cricketer who has had his whole professional career carefully mapped out in terms of when he plays, when he trains and when he rests, the addition of the IPL to his schedule in a year where Australia had away Tests tours in India and England, a World Test Championship final, and an away World Cup looks like a workload too big for even his broad shoulders to carry.
It was long forecast within the Australian camp that this would be a possible outcome. But it is also partly their own doing. Green is unlikely to have been on the IPL's radar had he not played in a bizarrely scheduled three-match T20I series in India this time last year when David Warner and Mitchell Marsh were both rested.
No one could begrudge him entering the auction that followed given his two blistering half-centuries in that series, and no one in their right mind could ask him to forego the life-changing AUD$3.15 million to rest during April and May and make the WTC final, the Ashes and the World Cup his priority.
However, what has unfolded since has been a valuable lesson in workload management. Between February and May he spent four months straight in India without returning home, then he had just two nights at home in Perth between the end of the IPL and the start of the tour of England.
Only three other Australian players went from the IPL on the Test tour of England. During the same four-month period, Warner had spent three weeks at home in late February and early March after fracturing his elbow in the second Test in Delhi. Josh Hazlewood did not play a match in India having gone home after the second Test in Delhi and did not return until halfway through the IPL. Marsh was not a part of the Test tour to India and went home to Western Australia for a week in mid-April during the IPL to get married.
Green, who has been a notoriously slow starter when it comes to switching between formats, then struggled on his first tour of England having never played there before at any level. His first match in England was a WTC final against India, where most of India's IPL players also struggled.
And Green never got himself into the Ashes with either bat or ball. A hamstring niggle kept him out of the third Test at Headingley where Marsh stepped in and starred. He returned for Old Trafford but was dropped for the first time in his Test career at The Oval.
He then had four weeks at home, resting from the T20I series against South Africa, before returning for the ODIs. But after making the most of his break by barely picking up a bat, he was hit in the head by the second ball he faced in South Africa and missed the next three matches with concussion.
Having been slated to bat No. 4 in the ODI side with a view to potentially playing a part higher up the order in the World Cup, Green returned to find himself without a defined role and was forced to act as a finisher and has battled for form and rhythm.
Now he finds himself out of the ODI side, replaced by Stoinis who has not made an ODI half-century since March 2019 and has averaged 16.80 across 32 innings in that time, not to mention his injury issues.
The challenge for Green is how he regains some form either on the sidelines or in high-pressure World Cup matches, and where he can get a rest given Australia's schedule after the event.
Australia have a five-match T20I series in India straight after the World Cup that he will likely be rested from. But if he wishes to regain his place in the Test side, he might want to play in the last Sheffield Shield game for Western Australia before the BBL break in late November or the Prime Minister's XI match against Pakistan, both of which are not in his home state.
Australia then play five Tests between mid-December and late January. Even if Marsh remains the incumbent Test allrounder, Green will likely travel with the team given Marsh's injury worries. His ankle flared up during the Ashes and he has hardly bowled in the limited-overs matches since. Australia then tour New Zealand in February and March before the IPL starts again. The T20 World Cup follows in June next year.
It is a never-ending treadmill that Green is on with nowhere to step off.