As selection panel chairman Rod Marsh tells it, the moment that Mitchell Starc limped out of the Australian summer with a stress fracture in his foot thoughts immediately turned to a potential replacement with an even lengthier injury history and who hasn’t played a first-class match this season.

Nathan Coulter-Nile was seen as a key part of Australia’s planning for this year’s World Cup until he suffered the latest in a series of hamstring injuries playing in the Indian Premier League, and underwent surgery to his hamstring tendon in the middle of last year.

Which saw him miss an extended period of cricket and robbed him of a chance for World Cup selection.

WATCH: NCN suffers hamstring injury last summer

He returned to play three ODIs and a T20 international at the end of Australia’s tour of the UK earlier this year, but was considered an outside chance of replacing Starc in the Test squad given he has not played a domestic first-class since match since last summer’s Sheffield Shield Final in Hobart.

But Marsh said today the national selectors made a call based on "gut feeling" given Coulter-Nile’s form in previous appearances for Australia and the fact that he has shown a capacity to "come back fresh" after the regular stints on the sidelines he has endured through injury.

"Once Mitchell Starc went down, I think everyone’s mind went straight to Nathan Coulter-Nile," Marsh said today when asked if the selectors had considered elevating a bowler who had shown more contemporary red-ball form to add to the Test squad.

"We’ve had our eye on him for a long time and we’ve been very pleased with the way he’s gone when he has played.

"But as you all know, he’s also been a fast bowler who hasn’t been injury free and I guess we’re at a situation now where because of the two Mitchells (Johnson and Starc) - one retiring and one being injured - that we do need a bit of pace up front.

"That doesn’t guarantee him a game of course in Hobart, but he’s in the 12."

WATCH: NCN takes two in two for Australia in England

It was as much Coulter-Nile’s pace – close to the 140kph that Australia coach Darren Lehmann has cited as the preferred benchmark for Test quicks – as his proven ability at international level that saw him leap frog in-form Shield bowlers such as Tasmania’s Jackson Bird.

And Victoria’s Scott Boland who has been placed on stand-by for the Hobart Test lest further injuries strike.

Quick Single: Boland the bolter for Hobart Test

Coulter-Nile was a member of the Australia A team that toured India earlier this year to play in games against India and South Africa, and Marsh conceded that injuries were simply an occupational hazard for fast bowlers so the 28-year-old’s injury history did not enter into their decision making.

"He came back very well, fresh in the Australia A series in India earlier this year so we’re not too concerned about that," Marsh said when asked if Coulter-Nile’s lack of recent red ball cricket saw him as something of a selection risk.

"It would have been good if he had been playing Shield cricket the whole season and taken 40 wickets, in an ideal world.

"But we don’t get too many of them so we’ll go with our gut feeling on Coulter-Nile, we like him as a bowler."

The selectors’ discussions were further clouded by Andrew Fekete’s recent loss of form that saw last year’s stand-out Sheffield Shield quick dropped from the Tasmania team barely a month after he was named in the Australia for the (ultimately postponed) tour of Bangladesh.

The loss of Starc and Johnson means Australia also enters the first Test of the three-match battle for the Frank Worrell Trophy without a left-arm pace bowler in their attack for the first time since the 2013 Ashes campaign in England.

Starc and Johnson in the veteran's last Test // Getty Images

With WA left-armer Jason Behrendorff, who played in the early season tour match against New Zealand in Canberra, now sidelined with back problems, Marsh indicated that veteran New South Wales quick Doug Bollinger was one of the few currently available to fit that role.

But Marsh also cited tall, emerging quicks Joel Paris (WA) and Billy Stanlake (Queensland) as players the selection panel was watching closely as they look to extend the stocks of Test-standard fast bowlers to be called on in the case of injuries and other unforeseen contingencies.

"I’ve said I don’t know how many times that we’ve got to have a battery of 10 fast bowlers," Marsh said today.

"And I know everyone out there looks at me as if I’m an idiot when I say that but I tell you what – we’ve got to have a battery of 10 fast bowlers.

"If we come up now with a good attack for this Test match (in Hobart starting next week) – which I think we have – and for the following two Test matches (in Melbourne and Sydney), and the one after that and the one after that (in New Zealand), we’ll have called on a lot of fast bowlers.

"That’s one thing I can promise you because they just don’t get through a lot of Test matches in a row."

WATCH: Paris's four wickets on Shield debut

While a minimum bowling speed of close to 140kph remains a key criterion for bowlers looking to earn Test selection, because anything slower than that can be targeted by batsmen especially when playing on flat, lifeless pitches, Marsh has offered hope to those who don’t boast that sort of velocity.

He cited the example of the pitch used for the historic day-night Test against the Black Caps in Adelaide that featured a healthy covering of grass, and was dominated by seam bowlers for the first time in many a summer with batsmen struggling to cope with the ball’s lateral movement.

If more of those sorts of pitches are prepared for Test matches, then seamers who bowl in the low to mid 130s (kph) will come under consideration by the selectors, Marsh claimed.

"If it's a hard, flat pitch then pace is obviously an advantage," Marsh said in explaining the ‘velocity philosophy’.

"(But) if it's a pitch with a little bit of grass on it, as we saw (in Adelaide) - I thought probably the best bowler for New Zealand was (medium-fast seamer Doug) Bracewell.

"Bracewell is low to mid 130(km/h) and he bowled beautifully because he bowled a line and length.

"There are guys other of our side that would have bowled beautifully on that pitch with the pink ball. No doubt about it.

"You've just got to sometimes pick horses for courses.

"The thing about Hobart is until we get down here we don't know what we've got."