Pat Cummins: The Magician with the Golden Touch

Kolkata: Renowned for his ability to take wickets at crucial moments, unmatched precision and a relentless determination, Glenn McGrath will be remembered as one of the greatest Australian fast bowlers of the past four decades. In the realm of Australian cricket captains, few can compare to the charisma and accomplishments of Steve Waugh.

Pat Cummins, though, is getting there almost unnoticed, one season at a time. In the three years since he was appointed to the job – to the Test team first in November, 2021 – Cummins has won the Ashes, the World Test Championship final, the ODI World Cup, and now the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

Not highlighted enough is also an equally telling phase of fast bowling as skipper where Cummins has taken 130 Test wickets at an average of 23.50. Only off-spinner Nathan Lyon has taken more wickets (140) in this phase. Of the seven bowlers to take more than 100 wickets in the period, only R Ashwin (22.15), Kagiso Rabada (20.58) and Jasprit Bumrah (16.10) have better averages.

To Bumrah’s record-equalling tally of 32 wickets (for an Indian fast bowler) this series, Cummins flaunts 25 wickets but with the caveat of having bowled in all five Tests. No other fast bowler barring Mitchell Starc (33) has featured in as many Tests as Cummins in the last three years. Interestingly, Windies allrounder Jason Holder is the only other pace bowler —though not as quick as Cummins — to lead in more consecutive Tests (21) than Cummins (18) in the last two decades.

What does that say about Cummins? Careers of genuine fast bowlers in their 30s are underwritten by periodic scans of their knees, toes and spine. And Cummins, notably, has a history of stress injury that had forced a bowling action remodelling and a six-year gap soon after his debut as a promising 18-year-old in 2011. For him to overcome that initial setback, embark on a professional career, take on responsibility as captain and thrive in an age when fast bowlers fade away as quickly as they rise points to a level of resilience still rare in athletes.

All this while bolstering his bowling credentials as well. Despite not being their pace spearhead, Cummins bowled 25.42% of the total deliveries for Australia — ahead of 24.40% by Bumrah — in a recent analysis. Series altering was the second-innings haul of 5/57 by Cummins at Adelaide. It included forcing a tickle off KL Rahul’s bat by aiming at his ribs and then bowling possibly the ball of the series, opening up Rohit Sharma with a length delivery that angled in before holding its line to peg back his off-stump.

Before the skies opened up at Brisbane, Cummins had raised hopes by getting Rohit and Rishabh Pant caught behind besides dismissing top-scorer Ravindra Jadeja when India were still 32 runs short of the follow-on mark. Similar returns awaited at the SCG, where Cummins orchestrated India’s final implosion by taking out Jadeja and Washington Sundar after inducing the marauding Pant to nick a short and wide bait to the wicketkeeper. With the bat too, Cummins thwarted India, most remarkably twice at the MCG — by featuring in a 112-run seventh-wicket partnership with Steve Smith before salvaging the second innings with a gritty 41 that pulled Australia from 91/6 to 173/9.

Cummins is by no means an allrounder. But he is clearly more than the sum of his runs or the manner of his run-making, as was evident at the MCG, that thrilling win at Edgbaston, or at Brisbane in January last year when Cummins nearly took Australia past West Indies in the first innings with an unbeaten 64. In a year when Kagiso Rabada was feted for being the quickest to reach 300 Test wickets (he is at 327 in 70 Tests), 294 wickets in 67 Tests is extraordinary for the captain of a side that was forced to go through an unprecedented leadership churn in the aftermath of the ball-tampering scandal before Tim Paine’s off-field misconduct caught Australia off-guard again in 2021.

It wasn’t an enviable position to be in, especially for a fast bowler. But Cummins didn’t mope or muse. To those who felt Cummins wasn’t Australian enough in his ways, he responded by silencing a packed Ahmedabad stadium in the ODI World Cup final. In a sport dominated by fragile egos, Cummins didn’t hesitate to ‘stick up for his mates’ when former greats spoke up for Justin Langer after it emerged that the players were pressing for a coaching change.

Goalposts kept shifting too. First came the Ashes, then tours of the subcontinent, the World Test Championship final, and so on. Till India came touring with Usman Khawaja and Marnus Labuschagne searching for big scores. Perth lost, Josh Hazlewood injured, the series couldn’t have got tighter. To emerge victorious from there, and as a result the holder of every bilateral Test trophy, was every bit an Australian renaissance. And it may not have been possible without Cummins chipping in at every turn.

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