Relax, Pat Cummins says he wants to play every Test he can
PL reports the Australian captain has made his intentions clear
Stand down, the future is not at hand. The dreaded moment, thought to have rushed down the pipe, is not here; no flood will wash away all we held dear.
Pat Cummins wants you to know that he wants to play every Test he can.
Forget the talk about players losing money to play a Test against Bangladesh when they could be getting rich at the Hundred, forget the SA20 and others bearing bags of boiled lollies, forget that long summer where he turned up once like a son home for one weekend a year before flitting off again.
Pat’s back and all is right with the world.
“Nothing has changed for me, my priority is Australian cricket, No. 1, particularly Test cricket,” Cummins told ESPNcricinfo in India. “As Test captain, I never want to miss any Test cricket and make myself available for as many Aussie games as I can.”
“The IPL is good in that it normally fits in our holiday break, so that’s the obvious one, but they are probably my main focuses, and I don’t see that’s going to change at all for the next few years for me at least.”
Hey, do what you want in your holidays, son, just make sure you’re there on the television when mum and dad settle in for that serious stuff. The feast days.
Quibbling, Cricinfo points out that Cummins is rarely around for the shorter formats. Cummins has played two ODIs since winning the World Cup in 2023 and hasn’t played a T20 since 2024. Further, it was February 2021 when he last played a Shield match for NSW and February 2019 when he last appeared in a Big Bash match.
And, you know what? I couldn’t care less. As long as Cummins respects the oldest and finest form of the game, that’s fine by me. If he wasn’t worth what he’s paid, presumably they wouldn’t pay him that much.
Remember, it’s his eminently marketable mug, used to flog most of cricket’s corporate sponsors’ products and services.
This thoroughly modern Australian cricket captain is built differently from those who came before him, but not that differently. Cummins and those who travel with him are acutely aware of the game’s new fields, fields where you can stub your toe on the precious gems that lie so close to the surface. Men like him generate most of the money in the Australian cricket economy.
Cummins gave the interview at a sponsor event in Mumbai. One of the shoe companies. Restored balance for New Balance. Just like those occasions when he doles out words of wisdom for Amazon Prime, who use him to promote their broadcasts of ICC events (when he gets home from the IPL, he’ll be talking up June’s women’s T20 World Cup).
These stars know their worth and appear on the surface to be a little more skilled at claiming it. Cummins is the first Australian captain in my experience not to do embargoed press conferences for the travelling journalists. Time zones mean Australian newspaper reporters miss the deadline if they rely on the traditional captain’s presser on the afternoon before the match in the northern hemisphere. Even the opposition captains used to help out when they could, knowing the same favour would be done for their press pack, but those days appear to be over. I’ve never asked him why he stopped doing them, but I suspect his thinking is that he does one and that’s enough. Cummins may see that traditional media is in decline and not as important as it once was, maybe he even thinks that it is the legacy media environment where he’s mocked for his quiet climate activism, and so not worth the extra effort.
Cummins, who missed all but one match of the Ashes with a serious injury, entered the IPL late but says the break has done him the world of good ahead of a gruelling period of Test match cricket.
"I actually feel really fresh for the last four months," Cummins told Cricinfo. "I haven't played as much. So physically, I feel as good as I have probably in six or seven years. I think a lot of the reason why I did probably miss longer than perhaps I could have was with the next 18 months in mind. Stress fractures in your back do recur quite often and we just wanted to eliminate all that risk to make sure that if I had a problem in six months, that could rule me out of a lot of those 20 Tests. So physically, I feel great. My back's fully healed, really strong. We took a very low-risk approach to the rehab to give myself the best chance to play all those Test matches."
India’s NDTV were also offered an interview with Cummins at the same Mumbai store event and breathlessly announced an exclusive line - Cricinfo were also claiming an exclusive - on the Australian’s impression of boy wondrous Sooryavanshi, the sum total of which was this:
He looks a real talent. I love the way he goes about it - super aggressive, no inhibition. He got a hundred against us, batted fantastically well.
Hold the front page, err, web page.
The best bit of the Q&A style interview, however, was the last.
Q: What do you think sets New Balance apart given that there’s a lot of competition in India in this space?
A: A couple of things. Their innovation over the last 10-15 years - they always come up with new concepts, new designs, new materials, new shoes. There’s always that edge between performance and culture that’s better than any other brand.
Q: What’s your take on the ‘Grey Days’ collection?
A: Yeah, it’s great. Goes back to the 1980s when New Balance were the first brand to have grey as a cool colour in their clothes and shoes, it’s quite bold.
Meanwhile, Cummins took three wickets to get his Sunrisers side into the IPL finals.
See you in Darwin in August at the Test match, Pat. You can show us your new shoes.