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Australia's forgotten man backed by Ponting

Former Test skipper still holds Test hopes for Nathan Coulter-Nile despite recent injuries and competition for spots

With the hype surrounding Australia's 'Big Four' fast bowlers already building ahead of the Ashes this coming summer, the name Nathan Coulter-Nile has rapidly slipped from the national consciousness.

Not only because the quartet of big-name speedsters offer, at least on paper, the genuine prospect of becoming one of the most fearsome and prolific fast-bowling attacks Australia has ever seen.

It's mainly due to the fact that, through no fault of his own, Coulter-Nile has barely been spotted.

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Of the past 47 games of cricket Coulter-Nile has played across all competitions and in all formats, 39 have been overseas.

More than half of those 39 matches have come in the Indian Premier League, which isn't broadcast in Australia, while the rest have either not been televised at all, been available only to the one third of Australians who can afford subscription television, or been played in the dead of night on the eastern seaboard.

Since playing in the KFC Big Bash League final in January 2015, Coulter-Nile has played just four matches that have been broadcast live on Australian free-to-air television in daylight hours or primetime.

Put simply, Coulter-Nile has been out of mind because he's been out of sight.

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But he certainly hasn't dropped off the radar of national selectors during the past two years away from our television screens.

The right-armer was part of Australia's Test squad during their home series against the West Indies in 2015-16 and again for their tour of Sri Lanka last year, while he's played a total of 13 limited-overs internationals, in Ireland, England, South Africa, the West Indies and India (the latter for the ICC World T20), in the past two years.

And having picked up 11 wickets in just six IPL matches to start his latest comeback from injury, Coulter-Nile has again showed why those who matter think so highly of him.

"He's a highly-talented player and he's probably someone who's been a little bit forgotten in Australian cricket because he's been injured so much," former Australia captain Ricky Ponting, one of the few Australians to have seen Coulter-Nile play first-hand during the past two IPL seasons, told cricket.com.au.

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"We didn't see him at all last season domestically, but the year before that we'd seen him in the Australian one-day and T20 teams and he was on the fringe of playing some Test cricket as well.

"Anyone who can bowl above 140kph and swing the ball in India is going to make an impact.

"It's not what the Indian top-order players are used to seeing and even for overseas top-order players, you've still got to be good enough to score runs and not get out against high-quality fast-bowling like Coulter-Nile's.

"You can mention him in the same breath as (James) Pattinson and those sort of guys. I don't think he's ahead of those guys if they're fit, but I think he's just behind them.

"When they're together and are all fit at the start of this summer, there's going to be some really, really interesting decisions made by the Australian selectors.

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"And Coulter-Nile's name will be up there."

Coulter-Nile's return to action in the IPL has come after what he’s labelled "probably one of the hardest years of my life" since being diagnosed with a bone stress fracture in his back that ended his 2016-17 Australian summer of cricket before it even began.

The back problem came after three consecutive hamstring injuries - two to the left, one to the right - limited his impact in 2014 and 2015 before he hurt his left shoulder and then his right one in separate fielding mishaps in late 2015.

It's restricted him to just a single first-class match since he took the wickets of Test batsmen past, present and future – Rob Quiney, Chris Rogers and Peter Handscomb – in the 2015 Sheffield Shield final.

And it's why Ponting wants selectors to take a patient approach in his latest comeback, even though the quick will celebrate his 30th birthday in October.

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"Am I surprised with what he's done in the IPL so far this year? Not really," Ponting says. "I've seen enough of him to know he's got all the tools to be a very, very good international player.

"But we're going to need to see a full Shield season out of him before we start making those judgements because it's going to be really hard to trust someone in a Test match if they're struggling to get through good chunks of domestic cricket.

"But you think of Starc, Hazlewood, Cummins, Pattinson, Coulter-Nile, Jackson Bird - he's right in the mix with all those guys. He's maybe not in the first XI, but he wouldn't be far away."

The return of Ashes cricket to Australian soil this coming summer will mark four years since Coulter-Nile first earned selection in Australia's Test squad, but his quest for a Baggy Green has yet to be realised.

And with the 'Big Four' as well as Jackson Bird and Chadd Sayers putting forward strong cases for Test selection, the Western Australian will have to fight hard to simply remain part of the conversation.

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He admitted as much in an interview last November, partway through his frustrating absence due to that back problem, when he conceded his Test ambitions were "fading".

"I've got such a long way to go now," he told Fox Sports at the time. "Especially with all these other young quicks coming through, it’s going to be hard work."

But a return to the cricket field has led to a more positive outlook in his rare media appearances in India, and Ponting says he has every right to be optimistic.

"He shouldn't be thinking it's fading at all," Ponting says. "He should be thinking 'if I get fit and strong, this could be the start of my Test career'.

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"I don't like ever to hear people looking towards the finish line ... he should be looking towards the start of something, not the end of something.

"Knowing where he's playing, he's playing over there with Justin Langer in WA and Justin would be pretty positive around him and would set him on the right path as far as playing good cricket for WA first.

"And if he does that then there's always the chance he could play some more white-ball cricket for Australia and definitely some Test matches as well."