Pat Cummins story: The Aussie in habit of turning lemons into lemonade

Pat Cummins was on the floor of his home sobbing away as he was packing to go travel for the Ashes series of 2021 when his wife walked in with their newborn. His first kid, a son, was born just four days back and she was taken back. He would tell her that he didn’t feel like leaving them, and she assuaged him. A few weeks into the series Tim Paine lost his captaincy after the sexting saga, and Cummins became the Australian skipper.

Cummins was crying at four when he excitedly burst into the bathroom to share with his sister a lolly he had been given. The irate younger sister slammed the door shut on him without realising his fingers were at the door – and he lost a few centimetres of his right middle finger. At the hospital after the doctors did their thing, his father would mimic bowling an imaginary ball, and when quizzed by the puzzled wife, he would say he just was wondering if Pat can bowl after this injury. Cummins would not only bowl, but in many ways started to bowl only after this episode; so he was never bothered about that finger’s length.

Cummins was 19 when he had that dream Test debut in South Africa, taking out six batsmen in the second innings and hitting the winning runs, a priceless 13 at No.10. But his heel would give away, and soon his back – and he was out of cricket for a few years, trying to remodel his action. But just like previous occasions when a crisis hit his life, something good would come out. This time around, 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 to this day by his own admission.

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Pat Cummins in action. (FILE photo) Pat Cummins in action. (FILE photo)

Not only that, the injury years meant he enrolled himself into a business degree course in Sydney university that he values a lot for giving him an idea what to do with life post cricket. There was also this small episode that happened there, that taught him the sort of life he needs to live. Tired by the long commute to the college, and since he had already played a Test for Australia and that university was known to admire sportsmen, he requested the management to give him a parking spot for his car, along with the faculty. When his mother came to know about it, she gave him the straight talk, and made him write out a letter of apology for seeking privileged out-of-turn favour.

Cummins returned properly to Test cricket, playing an Ashes series, when he went on a tour of Bangladesh in 2017. Such were the hot conditions that he kept vomiting at fine-leg, and lost 6-and-half kgs in a day. That episode made him firm up his resolve to get so fit that it never happens again. In a couple of years, he would produce the much-acclaimed seamer’s “ball of the century” when he knocked out Joe Root’s off stump with a pearler that cut away past the defensive prod to the batsman’s astonishment.

Cummins was in quarantine during the Covid wave, when the IPL was terminated and he had to go back home, when he was hit by another crisis. News came in that his mother was detected by cancer and she didn’t have too much time to live. “I am not ashamed that I struggled at those times. I learned a few things about the impermanence of life and importance of each day,” he would write in his book ‘Tested’. That situation turned him around again on what values he needed to live by.

Two years after his captaincy, the mudslinging began against him about being ‘Captain Woke’ for his alleged stand against an energy plant as the team sponsor. Even though the company itself would say Cummins was not the reason their sponsorship deal ended, the accusations stuck. Cummins’ response to that mini-crisis was to start ‘Cricket for Climate’, and later co-founded Treeswift Venture, a business enterprise.

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In some ways, each mini-crisis has resulted in him growing and evolving as a human. A positive-stubbornness to not buckle down under fire or circumstance, but to go one step further in his resolve and his value system.

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Just like the man, so has the cricketer evolved. The middle-finger injury meant he couldn’t bowl the outswinger, and couldn’t cut the ball away. Until he learnt about the wobble seam ball. He worked hard to perfect it and a stunning climax of that learning arrived when he knocked out Joe Root’s off stump in the 2019 Ashes, a series-turning moment under the dark skies of Manchester. He would almost repeat that ball to Rohit Sharma this series at Adelaide, yet again making the off stump rattle.

The middle finger is the last finger that comes off the ball at release for the right-handed seamers usually but it’s Cummins’s index finger that slips out the last. And that helps the ball come in more than away, but the wobbler helped him sort his variations out.

For the genial educated courteous man off the field, more than any other bowler, his face is quite something to watch as he releases the ball: he snarls, almost biting his flailing tongue as he grimaces. The last visual a batsman sees before the ball hurtles across towards them. More than most bowlers, Cummins finds a way to come with breakthrough wickets, especially when the game is on line. For he is willing to burst his guts out to try something. In mini-crisis, bowlers can tend to hit their stock balls, not Cummins. He will try the whole range, or keep specific fields to try to turn a batsman’s strength into a weakness on flat tracks.

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Occasionally, he can overdo it too. He can be hurling bouncers for an entire spell, ball after ball almost. Sometimes, as he did against Akash Deep and Jasprit Bumrah at Brisbane, he can carry it for too long. Just like he did against Harry Brook and Englishmen last year’s Ashes in Manchester but rain saved them there. Rain probably saved the Indians here in Brisbane, but he could perhaps have got them real tensed and fighting for survival had he changed his plans and removed the last pair before they saved the follow-on.

But that’s the part of the stubborn Cummins that comes out now and then, and spills over in his cricket. But for the main, the main takeaway is the thinking bowler is willing to try out stuff. Mitch Starc’s weapons aren’t a surprise; that he still strikes with them is a tribute to him. Ditto, Josh Hazlewood. But Cummins can change lengths entirely, try the wobble, the nip-backer, yorker, anything that can get a wicket. And more often than not, he does. Manchester and Brisbanes are more exceptions than the norm.

The evolution has reflected in his batting too. At one point before 2023, the classical Test batsman had dipped too much into the T20 batting method, and he couldn’t cope with adapting with both formats. When there was the danger of the T20 basher taking centrestage, he reassessed and worked hard to address the balance.

In 2023, he won the Ashes game at Edgbaston with his bat, smashing 44 in a 55-run ninth-wicket stand and also applied the sealing effect in the world cup semi-final that year against South Africa. The bat is yet to start talking about this series really but don’t rule that out either. But it’s Cummins the bowler that will come hard at the Indians. The MCG pitch is supposedly set to help some seam movement especially with the new ball, and though it won’t be a surprise if he does well here, it will be at the at the flattest track at the series-decider in Sydney where other seamers might struggle, that Cummins is likely to show his creative best.

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A stubborn person who refuses to let the world dictate how he should be as a man and a cricketer and a man who always has this ability to turn mini-crises to opportunities to evolve and grow.

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