Pat Cummins was crying on the floor of his home as he packed to travel for the 2021 Ashes series while his wife walked in with their newborn baby. Her first child, a son, was born just four days ago and she was taken back. He tells her that he doesn’t mind leaving them, and she reassures him. A few weeks into the series, Tim Paine lost the captaincy following a sexting scandal and Cummins became Australia’s captain.
Cummins was crying at four o’clock when he excitedly entered the bathroom to share a lollipop with his sister. The exasperated younger sister slammed the door shut, not realizing her fingers were in the door – and she lost a few centimeters of her right middle finger. After the doctors did their work at the hospital, his father would imitate bowling an imaginary ball, and when questioned by his bewildered wife, he said that Pat was wondering if he would be able to bowl after this injury. Not only does Cummins not bowl, but in many ways he only starts bowling after this episode. So he never worried about the length of that finger.
Cummins was 19 when he made his dream Test debut in South Africa, scoring a priceless 13 runs at number 10, dismissing six batsmen in the second innings. But his legs would give out, and soon his back – and he was out of cricket for a few years, trying to rebuild his function. But like the previous occasions when a crisis hit his life, something good would come out. This time, it was working with Dennis Lillee and bowling coach Troy Cooley, who helped him fine-tune his run-up and action. This fast bowling wisdom has helped him till date by his own admission.
Not only that, the injuries he had enrolled in a business degree course at the University of Sydney gave him a lot of importance as to what to do in life after cricket. There was also this little incident that taught him what kind of life to live. Tired of the long journey to college, and since he had already played Tests for Australia and the university was known to admire players, he requested the management to give him a parking space for his car, along with the faculty. When his mother found out about it, she gave him a straight talk, and made him write a letter of apology to find a side outside the privilege.
Cummins made a successful return to Test cricket in the 2017 tour of Bangladesh, playing in the Ashes series. Such was the heat that he vomited on the fine-leg, and lost six and a half kilos in one day. That episode strengthened her resolve to get so fit that it never happened again. In a few years, he would produce the much-acclaimed seamer’s “Ball of the Century” when he bowled Joe Root’s off-stump with a pearler that clipped a defensive prod that surprised the batsman.
Cummins was in quarantine during the Covid wave, when the IPL ended and he had to return home, when he suffered another crisis. News came that his mother was diagnosed with cancer and she didn’t have much time to live. “I am not ashamed that I struggled then. “I learned something about the uncertainty of life and the importance of each day,” he writes in his book ‘Tested.’
After two years of his captaincy, he was accused of being ‘Captain Wolk’ for his alleged stand against power plants as team sponsors. Although the company itself said Cummins was not the reason their sponsorship deal ended, the allegations stuck. Cummins’ response to that mini-crisis was to start ‘Cricket for Climate’, and later co-founded TreeSwift Ventures, a business venture.
In some way, each mini-crisis has made him grow and develop as a human being. A positive-stubbornness to go one step further in one’s determination and value system, not to fire or give up on a situation.
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Like humans, cricketers have also evolved. A middle finger injury means he can’t bowl the outswinger, and can’t cut the ball. Until he learned about the wobble seam ball. He worked hard to perfect it and a stunning climax to that learning came when he knocked out Joe Root off stump in the 2019 Ashes, the series finale under dark skies in Manchester. He would almost repeat that delivery to Rohit Sharma in this series in Adelaide, once again making a mess of the off-stump.
The middle finger is usually the last finger to come off the ball for right-handed seamers but it is Cummins’ index finger that comes last. And it helped the ball come in more than away, but the wobbler helped him sort out his variations.
For a humble man educated off the field, more than any other bowler, his face is something to behold when he releases the ball: he bites his tongue as he smiles. The last sight seen by the batsmen before the ball falls towards them. More than most bowlers, Cummins finds a way to come up with the best wickets, especially when the game is online. Because he’s willing to risk his guts to try something. In a mini-crisis, bowlers can hit their stock ball, not Cummins. He will try the entire range, or have specific areas to turn a batsman’s strength into a weakness on flat tracks.
Sometimes, he can do it too. He can beat bouncers for an entire spell, ball after ball almost. Sometimes, as he did against Akash Deep and Jasprit Bumrah in Brisbane, he can carry for too long. As he did last year in Manchester against Harry Brook and the English players but rain saved them there. Rain probably saved the Indians here in Brisbane, but he could have put them under real stress and fighting for survival if he changed his plan and got rid of the last couple before they saved the follow-on.
But that stubbornness is part of Cummins that comes out now and then, and spills over into his cricket. But for mains, the main takeaway is that a thinking bowler is willing to try stuff. Mitch Stark’s weapon is no surprise; That he still strikes with them is a tribute to him. Ditto, Josh Hazlewood. But Cummins can change the length completely, try a wobble, a nip-backer, a yorker, anything that can take a wicket. And more often than not, he does. Manchester and Brisbane are more the exception than the norm.
That development is also reflected in his batting. At one point before 2023, the classical Test batsman was heavily immersed in the T20 batting method, and he could not cope with adapting to both formats. When T20 Bashar was in danger of taking center stage, he reassessed and worked hard to strike a balance.
In 2023, he won the Ashes match with his bat at Edgbaston, scoring 44 runs in a ninth-wicket stand of 55 runs and also exerted a sealing effect in the World Cup semi-final against South Africa that year. Bat has yet to start talking about this series but don’t rule that out either. But it is the Cummins bowler who will make the Indians tough. The MCG pitch is set to help with some seam movement, especially with the new ball, and it won’t be a surprise if he does well here, given that it will be on the flattest track of the series-decider in Sydney where others. While seamers may struggle, Cummins is likely to be at his creative best.
A stubborn man who refuses to let the world dictate what he should be as a man and a cricketer and a man who always has the ability to turn small-crisis into opportunities for growth and development.
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