Konstas and Vidler are just the tip of the iceberg for a cohort that could become one of Australian cricket's brightest
Had things panned out differently last summer, Sam Konstas could have been recovering from the Under-19 National Championships on Boxing Day rather than facing Jasprit Bumrah.
Considering that even the cream of the Australian cricketing crop typically take years to graduate from dominating their teenage peers to pulling on the Baggy Green, the original plan had been for the 19-year-old to help his NSW Metro side defend their U19 title in Adelaide.
Yet Konstas was hopscotching his way through the Australian cricket's pathway.
On the final day of the U19 Champs Konstas missed because he was playing for Sydney Thunder, national selectors picked Konstas in the Test squad.
"People forget that when he was playing those innings against India and getting shoulder barged by Virat Kohli in front of 80,000 people, he was meant to be at the Under-19 national carnival in Adelaide," says Anthony Clark, Konstas' Australia and NSW U19 coach. "We let him go for the Big Bash and next minute he was in the Test team."
After his exploits against India, Konstas' face is now one that every cricket fan in the country recognises. Many now also know the name Callum Vidler, another who was still U19 eligible last summer, after the tearaway Queenslander's Sheffield Shield final pace blitz.
But what became increasingly apparent as the 2024-25 season unfolded was Konstas and Vidler are only the tip of the iceberg among one of the most promising cohorts of men's cricketers Australia has produced.
A drought-breaking title
The group's origins stretch back to the Australian U19 World Cup squad that last year won that tournament for the first time since the Mitch Marsh-led 2010 side. Suggestions of a 'golden generation' were no longer being made behind closed doors.
Going into last year's tournament, Konstas had shown himself to be one of the side's stars, but no more so than fellow top-order blazer, Harry Dixon, or captain Hugh Weibgen (both of whom out-scored Konstas in Australia's U19 games leading into and including the World Cup), nor the leaders of its formidable pace attack, Vidler, Mahli Beardman and Tom Straker.
During the month-long tournament, others proved as important to the side's thrilling run to the final.
Keeper-bat Ryan Hicks steered the team home against Sri Lanka in the kind of dry conditions that had previously been kryptonite to young Australian sides. Raf MacMillan ("one of these guys that calls bullshit when there's bullshit going on," says Clark) did similar in a galvanising one-wicket semi-final win over Pakistan.
Ollie Peake, called into the squad mid-tournament due to an injury to Corey Wasley, also played a series of nerveless hands. Harjas Singh, averaging eight before the final, vindicated a call to retain him to take on India's left-arm spinners when he top-scored in the decider.
Weibgen played one of the best innings of the tournament, a 120 against Ashes rivals England, but his most important contribution may have been the brave decision to bat first in the decider in overcast conditions that appeared tailor-made for his seam attack.
"Whenever it got tight, someone stood up and it wasn't always the same people," says Clark. "And as a bowling unit, whenever they got the ball, you always thought that whatever we had was going to be enough. We sort of talked that into existence."
Tom Straker, after taking six wickets in the semi, indeed had declared India would be "scared" of Australia's pace group. Such talk, even as Clark went all in by picking all four of the squad's speedsters (Charlie Anderson replaced the unlucky Tom Campbell) for the final, might have looked like bluster.
India had qualified for the final for the sixth time in seven U19 World Cups. They had won three of those tournaments and, more importantly, had owned Australia, who had not even come to beating them in five previous tournament encounters. In fact, they had won just once against India in 13 youth ODIs since the Marsh-led side won 14 years ago. (From five matches of a subsequent U19 tour of India in September and October last year, Australia failed to win one).
But the Aussie pace cartel, supported ably by off-spinner MacMillan, walked the talk. A short-ball barrage blew India off the park, the more fancied side losing 7-82 through their middle overs to put their target of 254 beyond reach.
Pace prospects
Even the more successful men's U19 World Cup teams Australia has produced in recent years have underwhelmed by way of producing international cricketers.
From the two sides that have reached the final in the years since that 2010 triumph, only Travis Head (a member of the 2012 group that finished runners-up to India) has become a regular for Australia. From the 2018 squad (which also lost to India in the final), only Nathan McSweeney, Will Sutherland and Xavier Bartlett have played international cricket. Todd Murphy, Cooper Connolly, Jake Fraser-McGurk and Tanveer Sangha are the most advanced from more recent cohorts.
The dearth of young pace bowlers making the jump from elite junior ranks to senior domestic cricket has been a concern. From the previous two U19 World Cups in 2020 and 2022, none of the Australia quicks have become regulars for their state or Big Bash sides. By contrast, all four of the seamers who trampled India at Willowmoore Park – plus allrounder Aiden O'Connor, the second youngest of that 2024 group after Peake – have all already had significant impacts at senior level.
"The World Cups I was a part of, India had the best fast bowlers, and they had the fastest bowlers," says Chris Rogers, who coached Australia's 2018 and 2020 U19 World Cup teams. "Ours were OK, but they were a fair bit off.
"But this generation of bowlers – all four of them have played professional cricket the next year. That's incredible, really. From that point of view, we haven't seen an Aussie side like that going back to Mitch Marsh's generation."
Of the 2024 U19 champion bowling group, Vidler had to bide his time the longest in 2024-25. He had taken five wickets on Sheffield Shield debut for Queensland at the tail-end of the previous season, but was not unleashed until the Bulls' final two games of the ensuing summer.
Whispers the right-armer was touching the 150kph mark were doing the rounds.
"We took him to Hobart in round nine and he almost played that game," says Queensland assistant coach Wade Townsend. "On day two at lunch time, Angus Lovell, our 12th man, had the unfortunate pleasure of facing him in the nets. He (Vidler) was ready to go – that was a fiery one." Tasmania's bowling coach, Rob Cassell, was in an adjoining net. "I was there flinging balls and thought, 'Wow, shit, this kid's got something."
They were not the only ones keeping an eye on Vidler. When he was unleashed in the Sheffield Shield final a few weeks later, decimating South Australia's top-order, his former U19 pace partner Beardman was observing closely from the other side of the country.
Restricted to white-ball cricket in 2024-25, the Western Australian was 'shut down' with weeks to go in the season in the interests of protecting his body, which WA Cricket deemed to be at risk of breaking down if exposed to Shield level too soon.
"We were in a net where he's ticking away with some really low-level technical work, because he was just battling some stuff with his groin, and he came running up to me and said, 'Big Vids has just hit 150 kilometres an hour!'" recalls WA's bowling coach Tim MacDonald.
"There is definite competition between that group of fast bowlers. We know that they're really talented, all of them, and they're probably the future of Australian fast bowling. There's some healthy competition – and it probably gets at him (Beardman) from time to time."
The raps on Beardman are as high as they have been on Vidler. WA's talent manager Dave Fitzgerald had been bullish on the high-energy speedster from the Margaret River region, while MacDonald noted a maturity beyond his years after he earnt a rookie contract aged just 17.
"The biggest indicator of future success for guys that are 14, 15, 16 (years old) is elevated ball speed – and he's had it since a pretty young age," says MacDonald. "He was bowling 140kph-plus from the age of 17."
It went deeper than that. Beardman was already skilful for his age when he went to South Africa with the Aussie U19 side in early 2024, by which point he had already made his One-Day Cup debut for WA. He was even better when he returned with a World Cup player-of-the-final medal around his neck, turning heads in accuracy competitions run by MacDonald during the early stages of the state's pre-season program last year.
"He basically wins them all hands down, already," says MacDonald of the target-practice drills. "The only other guy you'd see with those high levels of skills is Jhye Richardson. They love training, they love gamifying training and turning it into competitions. They want to take guys on to try to hit a 50-cent piece on the wicket."
Beardman's call-up to shadow Australia's senior men's team on a limited-overs trip to the United Kingdom shocked many. But good judges consider it only a matter of time before he is in that mix. Nine wickets in his final three matches for the summer (across the BBL and One-Day Cup) suggested he is ready for more opportunities, in Shield cricket as well. Getting his body right is the only obstacle.
"The temptation is to throw him in because his skill level is high, and we know that when he does play, he will be able to compete at that level," says MacDonald.
"But he's got a high-risk nature to what he does. He's had previous bone stress history in his back and in his pelvis. We know the biggest risk factor for a stress fracture is a previous stress fracture."
"It's hard because he's seeing his mates from this World Cup side all debuting in first-class cricket. But he's fully on-board with the plan – and hopefully that involves a lot more cricket next year."
There are promising signs for the other bowlers too.
Straker crossed to Queensland from NSW expecting a gradual rise to the senior Bulls side, but ended up playing five Shield games and three one-dayers, bowling close to 300 overs for the season. Anderson made an unexpected debut for NSW in October in a one-dayer on a trip to Melbourne when Josh Hazlewood woke up ill, opening the bowling with Pat Cummins in a win over Victoria. He played two more 50-over matches for NSW, while also dismissing Indian stars Yashasvi Jaiswal and Rohit Sharma in a tour match.
MacMillan, another Sydney-sider who headed interstate, impressed Tasmania enough with his over-spinning off-breaks to win a Shield debut. His Tigers teammate, O'Connor, a Launceston product who only moved to Hobart last year to link up with the Tasmanian squad, is another in fast-forward mode. The 18-year-old seam-bowling allrounder struck a half-century and took two wickets on Shield debut against Victoria, playing three of Tassie's last four games.
Bright-start batters
Getting the best from young batters is often a more delicate task after their U19 careers when they are fully absorbed back into their state programs. The lack of red-ball cricket played through junior levels (CA's U17 and U19 men's and women's championships consist solely of limited-overs matches) means winning a senior berth can be difficult when the Sheffield Shield is the main game, though the prominence of the Big Bash is changing that.
The very public battle Konstas had with his approach to batting in the months after his remarkable Test entrance encapsulates the struggle many face. His attempt to sweep Test quick Scott Boland in the third over of a Shield match garnered plenty of attention after he was an unlucky omission for the Test team during the Sri Lanka tour. Less noticed was a maiden List A hundred against Queensland (withstanding a strong middle-overs burst from Vidler) as well as half-centuries in NSW's final two Shield games to cap a season he commenced with patient Shield tons against SA.
"He's a really confident guy, as everyone probably is aware of now," says Clark of Konstas. "But I'm surprised that it happened so quickly. He just made the runs at the right time, and everything opened up for him. He did quite well when he got his chance, although I think he got caught up in the whole thing and probably went away from his core game a little bit."
The expectations on Konstas have already been set high – and he is not the only one among the leading bats from the class of 2024. In Victoria, a state that has failed to produce a regular Test batter this century, Dixon and Peake finished the season with performances that showed skill and composure beyond their years. After both showed promise in making BBL debuts for the Melbourne Renegades, the pair then made three half-centuries between them in the Vics' final four games.
Dixon was out playing cross-bat shots in five of his first six innings for Victoria. He impressed state coach Rogers with his willingness to seek feedback on his missteps. The former Test opener insisted Dixon's problem was not necessarily a bad one to have. "He's a fantastic learner," says Rogers. "He's spoken to a few people about it, he's decided how he's going to approach it and he's been practicing it.
"If you go into first-class cricket and the issue is that you're getting out hooking, that's pretty good compared to if you, say, can't stop the ball hitting the stumps or you're nicking them. And if teams are going to target him, they might have to deal with being punished as well – because he can hit that ball hard."
That was a lesson learnt by eventual Shield champions SA, who copped the brunt of a stunning Dixon hand in the Vics' penultimate match of the season. The left-hander pummelled five sixes while batting with the tail against the competition's best attack.
"They've got every fielder on the boundary and he's hitting it onto the hill," says Rogers. "You're thinking, this kid's 19 – that's quite extraordinary. They're basically saying, 'This guy's too good. We can't get him out, we're just going to try and focus on the other guy'.
"If you can do that in your third game, and you can keep learning and getting better, what you can do when you've played 40 or 50 games is going to be unbelievable.
"There is as much excitement over Peake, the youngest member of the class of 2024. Australia took him to Sri Lanka as a development player earlier in the year after he peeled off two centuries as Australia's captain on the U19 tour of India in September-October. Conditions in Puducherry and Chennai are about as remote as they come from those at the WACA Ground, yet the 18-year-old scored an innings-high 52 on Shield debut. The knock impressed even the Western Australians, according to MacDonald.
"To come in at 2-5, under that pressure and against Joel Paris, that's as hard as it gets," said Rogers, who grew up in Perth before moving to Melbourne during his playing career. "He just let the ball come to him, and he played a bit of a style that you don't see as often anymore, just because guys are a bit more attuned a T20 style of batting."
The class of 2010 v the class of 2024
In all, nine of the 16 Australians who played in last year's U19 World Cup have already played for their state or Big Bash sides. By comparison, 11 of the 15 who lifted the trophy in Marsh's 2010 squad had achieved the same level by the end of the 2010-11 season. Like Konstas in 2024, the 2010 group had a ready-made international player in Josh Hazlewood, who made his ODI debut within six months of being player of the final at his U19 tournament.
Immediate elevation is of course not necessarily an indicator of sustained success. Adam Zampa, not picked in the 2010 final, turned out alongside Marsh and Hazlewood as one of the jewels of that crop. Yet it took him some time and a move interstate to South Australia to bed down a regular spot at domestic level before graduating to international cricket in 2016. Others like Tom Beaton, Luke Doran and Tom Triffitt were blooded early but fizzled out.
