Josh Hazlewood was born on January 8, 1991, in an Australian town named Tamworth in the state of New South Wales. Amusingly, Tamworth is a town noted for country music, not cricket, but such a thing did not deter the man out of a career. He was raised in a slightly smaller town nearby called Bendemeer, where life moved languidly, and the biggest excitement was perhaps a weekend cricket match or a pop into the local general store. His dad, Trevor, was into a steel fabrication business. He was not work-thrusting but was more the type of father who showed Josh the value of work every single day. His mum, Anne, was a teacher who gradually got promoted to the position of headmistress of a small school in Woolbrook; she possessed a quiet and calm kind of energy, which counterbalanced the crazy neighborhood cricket matches he played with his elder brother, Aaron.
Aaron and Josh spent hours tossing a ball back and forth in the backyard, sometimes arguing, sometimes laughing until they could hardly breathe. Business development was later to be Aaron’s field; earlier in the life of his brother, however, he was Josh’s trainer, willy-nilly the target for his fast-ball practice. And then there is sister Casey; she would mostly keep to herself, quietly supportive in ways that you only notice after the years roll by.
Even as a child, Josh had this patience. By twelve, he was playing against adult men in local cricket matches. People would notice him, not because of flashiness but because of solidity. That solidity, that quiet determination, became his hallmark on the international scene. Growing up in a small town ensured there was no fame or fanfare, but instead, there was grit, resilience, and huge chunks of uninterrupted practice.
At seventeen, he made his first-class debut for New South Wales. Fast forward, and things just moved fast, but Josh remained: methodical, calm, and accurate. Standing there, very elegantly, just shy of two meters, he became one of the most dependable fast bowlers Australia could ever count on; off the pitch, he married his childhood sweetheart, Cherina Murphy Christian, a make-up artist. They did that in 2022, when their first child, a son, was welcomed in 2024.
This is Josh’s simple but somewhat extraordinary story: a boy from a quiet little rural town down-to-earth from his very grounding family who became one of the finest bowlers in the world with hardly ever a need to shout about it. Nothing here is glitzy, no high-drama stories ones out of a movie, just steady work, persistence, and a raw love for the game. And perhaps that is one of the key reasons why he is so good at it.
