Pat Cummins | The atypical Aussie captain

Australia’s sixth ICC Cricket World Cup title caps off a monumental year for Pat Cummins, launching him into the pantheon of greats. Subscribe to The Hindu to read this profile of Australia cricket captain Pat Cummins

Pat Cummins wears a broad smile as he stands awkwardly on the makeshift stage, the ODI World Cup trophy held low in his hands. He looks to one side and waits for his teammates to join him in the celebration. The Australian cricket team had only just ripped the script of India’s fairytale campaign and its captain was politely waiting for the dignitaries to leave the platform before the team could rush in and together lift Australia’s sixth World Cup trophy.

Rewind to 2006, when an Australian side at the peak of its powers won a first Champions Trophy that had long eluded them. At the presentation ceremony after the final, Ricky Ponting, the chief architect of that golden generation, beckons the BCCI president to hand over the trophy and the rest of the team pushes the official off the stage, to spark the revelry... and a barrage of criticism in the following days.

Much ink has been spilt on the softening of the Australian cricket team in recent years, well documented in The Test web series, but these two moments 17 years apart probably sum it best. The bravado of one captain gave way to the niceness of the modern, post-Sandpapergate skipper.

It is said that captaining the Test team is the second-most important job Down Under, only behind that of the Prime Minister. Yet, Cummins is almost apologetic about the machismo innate to Australians when he describes how his leadership style is different from previous captains.

“I think it’s different to what’s been done in sport, especially in Australia,” he tells YouTube channel Business of Sport. “You know Australia has quite a macho kind of culture, whereas nowadays you have guys coming out of school, barely adults, trying to find their way through life. And our team spends 10 or 11 months on the road in a year. So if you don’t have a culture that is welcoming and fun, it becomes all-consuming.”

The job did look like it was consuming him in a packed schedule this year. Coming into the World Cup, Cummins was not in the best form and looked jaded in the first two games. But his teammates would later credit his calmness and tact to guide the team through choppy waters and cap off a nine-game winning streak to win the title.

The journey to the summit has been an arduous one for the blue-eyed boy from Sydney’s Blue Mountains. Having played cricket since he was five, he made his big break into the national team as a lanky, brittle 18-year-old. The new pace bowling sensation from the land of fast, bouncy wickets debuted in all three formats in the 2011 tour of South Africa. A Man of the Match award in his Test debut set tongues wagging, but what followed was misery. A string of injuries relegated him to playing only white-ball cricket over the next few years. He would play his next Test match only six years later, in 2017.