Cricket 2022: Australia Test captain Pat Cummins reaping the benefits of standing firm under fire

After weathering the storm around Justin Langer’s exit as coach and emboldened by his peers, Pat Cummins is quickly becoming one of the most powerful captains Australia has had.

Pat Cummins throws the ball during a practice session at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium in Rawalpindi on March 1, 2022, ahead of the first cricket Test match between Pakistan and Australia. (Photo by Aamir QURESHI / AFP)

Who had the tougher job leading a three-Test tour team to Pakistan … Pat Cummins or Richie Benaud?

The temptation is to say Richie of course because he toured there 63 years ago when there was no bottled water, no coaching staff, when hotels were not what they are now, and the first Test was played on matting where local groundsmen randomly tossed stones under it to make life difficult for Australian batsmen.

But Richie, for all these challenges, had one advantage … in his day, the general public never got the chance to answer back, to question his every move, from team tactics to selections, to public comments.

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It grinds the best and worst leaders down to the point where captaincy in many major sports is not coveted anywhere near as much as what it was.

Before Benaud left for Pakistan in 1959, he contacted Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies and asked whether he had any advice for speech-making in Pakistan and India.

Pat Cummins is leading Australia on his first overseas tour. Picture: Aamir Qureshi/AFP

Can you imagine the Twitter pile-on if Cummins had done the same with Scott Morrison?

In Benaud’s day, social media were touring journalists who liked a drink not keyboard warriors with acid-dipped fingers.

On paper, Cummins breezed through his first series as a captain with a 4-0 shellacking of England but his greatest test came in the weeks after it when he was the public face of powerful player sentiment that felt Justin Langer had run his race as coach of with the Australian cricket side.

He came through it soundly, weathering some strident criticism from fans and the occasional jab from ex-players, but all the while we got the impression we were watching a boy turn into a man, for this was Cummins’ first major public crisis as a leader.

For the first time, Cummins felt the force of a public backlash and it is still coming in dribs and drabs. As the dust settled it was evident the single sentence which internally cemented his future as captain was his line, “To all past players, I want to say this. Just as you stuck up for your mates, I’m sticking up for mine.’’

Pat Cummins is becoming a powerful force as Test captain. Picture: William West/AFP

The former players did not love the sentence but the ones under his care did because they felt he was boldly fastening his flak jacket and sticking up for their interests.

It was not a bad move by the captain because without respect from within a leader has nothing. Starting from Friday’s first Test in Rawalpindi, Cummins has three heavy duty Test tours of Asia looming in the next year and will need every shred of support he can get for the long, grafting days ahead.

What is becoming clear is that Cummins is quickly becoming one of the most powerful Test captains Australia has had.

If he wants something, within reason, he will get it.

Several Cricket Australia board members were ultra-keen not to axe Langer.

They knew the Board would be bombarded with criticism from the public and ex-players and they became so muddled that they offered Langer a token six month contract extension, sensing full well he wouldn’t take it.

Pat Cummins will spearhead the Australian pace attack in Pakistan. Picture: William West/AFP

The players stance proved decisive in a way it would not have been in some bygone generations.

Most Australian captains had their power limited in some way.

For all the greatness of players such as Don Bradman, Ian Chappell and Greg Chappell and Allan Border, they played their careers before the formation of a players union in the late 1990s so any time they had gripes with the board it often felt like one man taking on the world.

Several of them finished exhausted to the point where Rod Marsh, in his 2018 released autobiography, said that no captain should last for any more than 30 Tests because the strain of the role turned them inside out.

Cummins is one of the few captains who has the full support of the players union and the CA Board who both know that Australia has few captaincy options and they must make his tenure work.