Pat Cummins’ introduction to Test cricket was nothing short of special. It is easy to forget that the 24-year-old earned his first baggy green cap all the way back in November 2011 against South Africa at the Wanderers.
Then 18-years-old, Cummins had become the youngest Test debutant for Australia since Ian Craig in 1953. That the Sydney-born man would pick up a six-wicket haul and hit the winning runs in that Test in a man-of-the-match performance showed that the hype around him was real.
It is a shame then that in the six years since making his debut, Cummins had played only four Tests coming into the Ashes 2017-18 series. All four of those Tests had come in 2017 against India and Bangladesh.
A stress fracture to his back has been the pacer’s undoing over the past few years and his constant injury troubles had brought to a halt a fledgling international career. There has been many a time that Cummins seemed destined to mount a comeback, only for him to breakdown once again at the first hurdle.
Such were his injury troubles that while a future in the limited-over format remained bleak, his body’s ability to withstand the rigors of five-day cricket remained a distant dream. It would have been easy for Cummins to give up on a Test return and focus on the limited-overs as he sought to manage his workload but the pacer has remained focus on the former and is now reaping the rewards for his perseverance.
Cummins was the man-of-the-match on his debut in 2011.
Credit must also been given to Cricket Australia for sticking with Cummins in his long years of injury woes but it’s a testament to the latter’s determination that he put his hand up when Mitchell Starc broke down in the tour of India earlier in 2017.
After missing much of 2016 with injury, Cummins had only just returned to the international fold in the limited-overs clashes against New Zealand and Pakistan. It would have been logical for him to build his fitness up some more before making the leap back to Test cricket but when the chance to replace Starc in India arose, Cummins wasted no time in taking up the call.
He was a revelation in the two Tests he played against India despite the 2-1 loss and he displayed the same once again in the tour of Bangladesh later. His ability to thrive on slow subcontinent decks was pleasing to see and his willingness to bend the back after years of rotten luck was refreshing.
Before the start of the Ashes, Cummins had aimed at playing all five Tests as he sought to prove to himself and everyone that his injury troubles were behind him for good.
Cummins overshadowed his famed counterparts in the Ashes.
And play in all five games he did to end up as the leading wicket-taker in the series with 23 scalps to his name. Australia’s three quicks topped the wicket-taking tree and that Cummins outshone Starc and Josh Hazlewood, even marginally, is a fitting finale to his long and treacherous comeback road.
That Cummins had the talent and possessed all the weapons that make a lethal fast bowler was already known in 2011, it is his rise like a phoenix from the ashes of his injury troubles to once again fulfil that potential which is the story of Australia’s big win.
Skipper Steve Smith might take all the plaudits for his insane run-scoring in the and rightly so, however, in Pat Cummins, Australia have rediscovered a gem they thought they had lost for good.
