‘Like an AFL coach’: How injury helped Cummins mastermind World Cup win

Pat Cummins has revealed how two games he didn’t play provided Australia with the blueprint for World Cup glory in India.

After suffering a fractured wrist while fielding in the final Ashes Test at the Oval, Cummins was still recovering when he flew to South Africa to watch the final two games of an ODI series against the Proteas alongside head coach Andrew McDonald.

Pat Cummins with the World Cup trophy.Credit: Getty

Over the games in Centurion and Johannesburg, Cummins watched the likes of Josh Hazlewood, Marcus Stoinis and Adam Zampa get pummeled by Heinrich Klaasen and company, and with McDonald talked through the plans they ultimately used at the Cup.

In particular, the perspective from on high, which Cummins likened to that of an AFL coaches’ box, convinced him that trying to nail yorkers in the death overs was not a percentage move – the slower ball and bouncer plans that curtailed India in the Cup final in Ahmedabad were born on the high veldt. During the game where Travis Head broke his hand, no less.

It was the same viewpoint from which Cummins had been so scrutinised during the Ashes; his tactics had been widely questioned during the back end of the England tour.

By the time of the World Cup, those same tactical queries had been replaced by widespread praise for how well Cummins moved the chess pieces.

“You definitely see things a little bit clearer from the bird’s-eye view. It’s the same with AFL coaches,” Cummins told this masthead. “They sit up high and you see angles a little bit differently, and you just get a different sense to what you have when you’re out on the ground.

“The thing that stands out is how hard it is – it was Jo’burg and Centurion and there were big runs scored in both games. So from afar as well you look at it, and it is a bit of a pressure release, seeing that. And it is like you’re seeing things play out and just a different perspective to what we normally get on the ground.

“Sitting up there next to Andrew means we could talk through things on the fly ahead of the series.”

Watching Klaasen, Aiden Markram and David Miller dispatching full deliveries with impunity, Cummins realised that the precision required to land yorkers was not so easy to find after 40 draining overs in the field on the hot days they invariably met in India.

“I think in Centurion it was hot, about 40 degrees, the boys had been out there for three hours,” he said. “Then you’ve got two set batters, and you’re running in trying to hit yorkers and as an outsider that just looked really hard to do. The boys looked tired, they’d been out there for hours.

South Africa’s Heinrich Klaasen on the rampage at Centurion Park.Credit: AP

“So, I think, off the back of that you start to have conversations around ‘OK, well, at our best, yes, we might be able to hit yorkers, but if we’ve been in the field for 40 overs, and we’re cooked, how do we put the percentages back in our favour?’ So slower balls, maybe bouncers or cutters, things that have a bit more margin for error.

“I remember that being one conversation. And a lot of the chat was around those middle overs and how to try to create something with the ball and create wickets. By the time the tournament started, we were really clear on how we wanted to play and the style we were going to play. I felt pretty confident going in.”

The subsequent World Cup victory, as Cummins’ men shrugged off two early defeats to go on a nine-game winning run, was perhaps the greatest single tournament performance by an Australian men’s team.

“It will be a year I’ll remember as probably the highlight of my cricketing career,” Cummins said on Christmas morning. “A really busy year, but in terms of cricket the most satisfying I’ve personally had.

“A lot of sacrifices this year, a lot of the boys have spent way more time away than they have at home. So it’s good to get together this time of the year and celebrate.”

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