And they are also the people most likely to find themselves stuck back at home - as Stuart Broad did last Christmas - while the rest of the team is living it up in the sun.
Broad spoke about his frustrating winter on Monday, for the first time since returning to Australia to complete his rehabilitation from a badly torn stomach muscle.
Being an uncomplaining type, he describes the experience with laconic humour rather than bitterness.
Even so, it must have been galling to commit so much industry to this tour, and then feature in only nine days of international cricket. Or six, if you discount the time Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott spent grinding out runs in the middle.
“It is the first time I’ve had to do a decent amount of rehab and it makes me realise you have to be as fit as possible because it is not much fun,” said Broad.
Asked whether he had been frustrated by his limited contribution to the series - which stood at two wickets and no runs - he replied: “I don’t really think of it as being those two Tests, I think of the 18 months that built the team that was able to win the Ashes, and I felt very much part of that.
“I only watched the first hour or so of the games I missed because I was starting rehab pretty early. But as an England supporter I was very proud of what the team achieved.”
Broad rejoined the tour a week ago in an attempt to improve his cricket fitness (he has been working exhaustively in Nottingham Forest’s gym at the City Ground for the past two months), but he was never expected to rejoin the battle against Australia.
In any case, all remaining tension has gone out of this one-day series after England’s batting collapsed in Brisbane on Sunday night, allowing the Australians to take a decisive 4-1 lead with two games to play.
Broad has spent the past couple of days bowling in the nets at around 60 per cent, and intends to crank it up further before the end of the week.
But his real goal is to prove his fitness by March 22, the date of England’s first World Cup match, against Holland.
“I’d like to think there is no problem there at all, but I won’t know until I’ve bowled off my full run,” he says.
If England have missed Broad’s all-round skills, then his prickliness and drive would have been equally valuable during the limp tail section of this tour.
These were qualities he showed in Adelaide in early December, when he attempted to play on through one of the deepest muscle tears the England medics have seen.
“I bowled the first ball of my second spell in the second innings and felt like something had gone,” Broad said. “By three balls in, it was really throbbing, like a really deep stitch. I knew they wanted to bounce Clarke so I was running in and every ball was just getting sorer and sorer.
“I went off and the scan showed there was no chance of continuing. And when all the bleeding started coming — there was blood all down my side –- it was definitely a no-go. I tried to come back out and field for a bit, because knowing the wicket was quite flat, I thought I might be able to bowl dobbers like Paul Collingwood. But the next morning I couldn’t even get my arm over.”
It is a hard school, fast bowling. As Broad, Plunkett, Shahzad et al will all no doubt attest.
England seamer Liam Plunkett airlifted from Caribbean England,seamer,Plunkett,airlifted,Caribbean http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/8293609/England-seamer-Liam-Plunkett-airlifted-from-Caribbean.html
On the move: Liam Plunkett will leave England Lions in the Caribbean to join up with the squad in Australia Photo: GETTY IMAGES