World Test Championship final: Australian captain plans to play all six England Test matches

Pat Cummins is planning to take his role as captain to a whole new level as the Aussies start their hectic schedule of cricket today. See the details here.

Once as brittle as they came, Pat Cummins is now aiming to become a Test cricket ironman by playing six Tests in eight weeks as a fast bowling captain.

The World Test Championship final against India at The Oval, which begins on Wednesday, is the first of six Tests in quick succession for Australia on English soil, with five Ashes rubbers to follow the date with the Indians.

This week’s clash also marks Cummins’ 50th Test, 49 of which will have come since 2017. The other was way back in 2011, before years of back injuries threatened to deny Australian cricket a generational talent.

Pat Cummins is planning to play six Tests in eight weeks in England. (Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)

Having taken over the Test captaincy following Tim Paine’s shock resignation on the eve of the 2021-22 Ashes, Cummins has since missed only a handful of Tests. One was due to a Covid scare that summer in Adelaide, the next because of a minor injury against the West Indies last summer and then a couple earlier this year when he flew home from India to be with his terminally ill mother Maria.

Cummins’ goal to feature in the full set of matches this English season shapes as among the most challenging physical tasks of any cricketer in modern times given the compact nature of the schedule.

Josh Hazlewood has already been ruled out of the WTC final, leaving Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Scott Boland to take on the brunt of the pace load against India, with Cummins suggesting that the Victorian should now be considered firmly in the top tier of Australian quicks alongside the longstanding NSW triumvirate.

Scott Boland should now be considered firmly in the top tier of Australian quicks. Picture by Michael Klein

“I wouldn’t say pecking order I think we’re big on kind of everyone bowl slightly differently. You know, even Scott is a seam bowler on a good length but he just offers something slightly different to say Joshy Hazlewood and obviously Starcy being a left hander is bit different so I don’t think there’s ever a pecking order, I think, you think about kind of the three guys that you want to go out and play,” Cummins said of Australia’s pace stocks.

But while Cummins flagged some shuffling of the seamer group, one which also includes understudy Michael Neser who was added to the WTC final squad after Hazlewood was ruled out, the captain has no specific plans for a rest.

“What I will say six Test matches in seven weeks, hopefully I’ll play all six but you know I daresay will be rotating through plenty of bowlers. Well you know I dare say we’ll be using at least four bowlers quite a lot,” Cummins said.

“I mean it’s a balance. I’ve been exhausted and depleted before but still got up and felt like I did a really good job. But yeah, if that kind of comes up at any stage, of course, it’s a conversation. You know, similar to a few of the niggles like in Adelaide, knowing that we had a full fit Scotty Boland on the bench made my decision pretty easy to pull out that game. So yeah, I’ll be aiming to play all six and there’s some good breaks in between kind of every batch of two Tests matches here. So I think it’s manageable. But obviously (all-rounder) Cam Green helps out a little bit as well with the amount of overs he can bowl.”

Pat Cummins is hopeful of lifting the Ashes urn on English soil.

Addressing his milestone, Cummins said he was particularly proud of making it this far given his rocky early days.

“I thought getting back into Test cricket was so far away for a lot of that. I felt that maybe I could play a T20 or one-day cricket, but my body, 10 overs a day I would wake up and felt like I had a car crash. Looking back now, all the physios and people who went through this before me were spot on. Stay patient, you will turn a corner and be right. But when you’re in your fifth cycle of stress fractures, 50 Tests feels like a long way away.”

Originally published as World Test Championship final: Australian captain plans to play all six England Test matches