An infected hair follicle on an Australian fast bowler’s upper thigh will result in mass paranoia in the team’s medical ranks these days.

A routine lancing together with a skin care pamphlet from a local dermatologist will be declined in favour of a total overreaction, where the player in question will be slid through MRIs, CATs and X-rays before being placed on ice indefinitely until he can safely put on a pair of pants again without feeling slight discomfort.

Warner may never press a stamp on a letter again.

As for the batsmen?

Short of a having a cherried limb dangling from the torso, major brain surgery or just being Shane Watson, you’ll be given nada love from the white coats and told in no uncertain terms to whack a pad on your ailment and take block.

The current case in point is David Warner.

Right now, a joint in the high-traffic part of the opener’s thumb is still badly cracked meaning it’s probably not in the right state to deal with the weight of international-standard red projectiles, be it at the crease or on the bullet corral near point and gully.

However, it seems the cotton wool approach so loved by the Australian hierarchy for bowlers has been canned for Warner in favour of unconvincing choruses of ‘she’ll be right’, and he may be risked to play subject to a late test.

My question is, if the damage is still so raw and extended irreversible mangling is a possibility, why is he even being considered?

The possibility of long-term structural damage to a valuable thumb on the fast hands of our valuable top-order TNT should make this selection unreasonable from the get-go.

What Warner had to say this week, while admirable in its desire to give the proverbial left plum for the colours, was a little concerning to say the least.

”I have a crack in the joint,” he said. ”Where the joint moves, in the corner, I have cracked that part, which in the healing process can be worse if it’s aggravated and if I put cortisone in there.

”They’ve told me if it keeps moving around it won’t heal properly and it can affect me down the track, so I might not have that range of movement in that joint for a long time.”

Now, surprising to most, I’m no quack. But even I reckon that sounds a wee bit alarming. Range of movement? For a long time?

Surely that kind of medical phrasing has to prick a Cricket Australia doctor’s paranoid ears in a similar fashion to fatigue, general soreness or a hamstring strain, all of which have been worthy of cricketing downtime this summer for the bowlers.

You could be forgiven for thinking the Australian ranks are awash with curative prejudice towards those with willow in hand.

What makes the push to play a nine-fingered Warner even more bewildering is the Partridge Family travelling squad that has made the trip. The bus of reinforcements is so large that the selectors wouldn’t even be forced to give Usman Khawaja a start, which we all know they will make any excuse to avoid.

And if it’s the firebrand leftie who is showing the surplus bravado and pushing the selection envelope, then the doctors need to grow a backbone and implement the same “Pete Siddle is talking out of his arse as he’s still delirious from his 125 overs in Adelaide” ruling that was forcefully deployed on those excessively roasted patriots pre-WACA test this summer.

Help me people. Where is the consistency in the application of Australian cricketing medicine?

Let’s just say that Australia’s pimply new-look batting order totally craters in this upcoming series against India.

Let’s imagine the confidence of this adolescent unit is obliterated by subcontinental guile and their bright-eyed bushy tails end up between the legs in the usual stance of those vanquished.

If those in selection power are still offering their usual pint-sized probation period, it will mean more delicate tinkering or belligerent bulldozing of the top six before a squad is picked to enter the Lion’s den of the Ashes series.

Hank the Tank after another whopper.

Considering there is frail youth and inexperience dotted throughout the team now that a personnel revolution is in full swing, one would think the first place to turn in a time of baby-faced humiliation and destitution would be to the match-hardened elderly.

So if the wicket landslides and budget totals are to continue surfacing in this series- and lets admit it, there’s a very good chance they will- how about taking a punt for England by calling up Adam Voges to add some Sandgroper cement to the middle order?

His Sheffield Shield numbers are certainly not turning heads on the selection catwalk this season (367 runs at 33.36 with a high score of 94), but it’s the West Australian’s current splendid patch of form and his bucketloads of experience in English conditions with Nottinghamshire that make him an attractive option.

Voges is coming off an outstanding 112 not out for Australia in last weekend’s ODI against the West Indies, plus there’s a 72 in his most recent Shield hit-out along with a 112 and an unbeaten 77 in his last two Ryobi Cup matches.

His County record for Notts is a cracker too, having amassed 2736 runs at an average of 45.60 in his five seasons on the Pom first class circuit.

With Shane Watson almost surely to be elevated to the opener’s position with his repeated public reminders of ‘shotgun’ recently, Voges could be the perfect strengthener to wedge in the middle and help Michael Clarke give the batting guts some settled solidarity.

He can also bring another wise head to the skipper’s round table of generalship, plus his gentle left-armers are also a value-add.

I know this portfolio has the all-too-familiar echoes of a Marcus North project, but really, can Australia afford to deep-end more of the puerile and untried if they limp home from India?

The team could do a lot worse than having ‘Hank’ around the traps.

We know the selectors aren’t comfortable with endemic batting failure, reasonable displays of patience and Ed Cowan.

They also have made it clear that weathered campaigners with cascading runs columns like George Bailey and David Hussey aren’t on their list for such roles.

So could it be Voges that is used as an Ashes band-aid?

This is a call to anybody who possesses one of those old-fashioned pre-smartphone memory banks that extend further than the previous 72 hours.

I need somebody to microchip me with a rapid cram session on what has actually occurred in the last 12 months of Australian cricket so we can competently nut out who will be forced to manufacture some emotion as the winner of this year’s Allan Border Medal on Monday night.

Modern cricket’s sardine scheduling and skinny levels of home grown household names has left me trying to read a scrambled seam, and I need some tutoring on who on the payroll stands out in recent times.

Starc: the bowler who has broken down the least. Instant candidate.

Now before you splurge the memories, and I know this will eliminate a massive wedge from the information pie, you must know that anything about informed player management needs to be omitted. So please, concentrate on intently staring through that choking haze of contention as if looking for a hidden tugboat in a magic eye 3D image.

With AB’s bling of virtue up for grabs, what’s required is the hard data on those unsung backroom blokes who play second fiddle to the overlord physios and witch doctors, and that’s our beloved players.

Getting an indication on the winner of cricket’s Brownlow-wannabe award is becoming increasingly difficult with each passing year. As it still exists in street-cred accumulation stage, you don’t get the sneaky leaks of the AFL equivalent, so unfortunately you have to leave the bookies and unnamed insiders alone and think for yourself.

Wading through the complicated tapestry of the voting window is hardly straightforward.

Thanks to Cricket Australia’s locker room turnstiles spinning like over-throttled ferris wheels due to fluctuating form and enforced leisure time, and with so many different competitions meshing together to form a technicolour cricket reverie, it’s no wonder that Crown Lager sponsors the event inside a casino to provide a distraction for players from recalling tours and decoding the tallying process.

So before those Crownies arrive to surely provide further decision-making haze, let’s try and frame a market from the memories of the last 12 months.

The obvious choice for honours is Michael Clarke, the man with the wide bat for scoring and the broad shoulders for carrying our can. He’s a stellar choice for those plonking down some hard-earned, but one must remember that with the voting period running from 25th February 2012 to 28 January 2013, it means a good third of his record-breaking calendar year efforts will not be included for review, as 594 of his 1544 runs were made in the months of 2012 beforehand.

Many will also mention Michael Hussey, and really, murmurs of vote rigging for some farewell hardware for the revered man would probably be corruption embraced by all. However again, Mr Cricket spent some time out of the office due to family reasons, and in the last 3 weeks of voting, he was back in his Perth digs quietly throwing darts at pictures of John Inverarity while pyjama votes were up for grabs.

Warner may pester his way to the award.

So perhaps it will come down to those who have simply become part of the dressing room furniture across all fashions of the game?

David Warner has bizarrely morphed in to some kind of Mr Consistency as the everywhere-man across the national spectrum, and is the leading run-scorer for the voting period with 1840 runs, so he will bring the smoky factor to calculations. However, is consistent selection with inconsistent influential knocks going to rack enough votes to get the medal around its neck?

Then there’s beanpole speedster Mitchell Starc who topped the charts for the bowlers across all forms with 51 wickets, so he may have a say in the final wash-up too. In saying this, the fact that only two bowlers have won the award in the past (Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee) shows they are cricket’s version of the unappreciated key position backs, so the young left-armer would probably be wasting a good quill by penning an acceptance speech.

Will the recipient come from one of these semi-convincing standouts or am I missing a special performance from the whirlpool of games that occurred in the relevant period?

I’m looking for some suggestions, as when I reach back in to my bubbling stew of recent Aussie cricket memories, I don’t get much chop.

I see and hear a lot of something that appears like Shane Warne, half of Peter Siddle and probably too much Glenn Maxwell. There’s a smidgeon of Usman Khawaja but only in conspiracy theories, a conga line of seamers wrapped in Elastoplast and a lot of public wailing, mainly about selections, T20 and Madden brother overkill.

Now I know I’m really struggling. I think I just saw Peter Forrest!

Someone with total recall, no rose coloured glasses and some smart money, please lend a hand.

Around which neck shall Captain Grumpy’s medal be hung?