‘Un-Australian’: Pat Cummins’ Ashes reality is tragically unfair

Pat Cummins has been called everything under the sun and the Ashes furore has exposed a dark truth Australia can’t ignore.

Pat Cummins shot his hands in the air to embrace Alex Carey and unleashed hell.

The Australian Test captain’s pumped up celebrations in the space of the 10 seconds he had to think about re-calling Jonny Bairstow on the explosive final day at Lord’s put a target on his back in the UK and invited plenty of scorn from across the rest of the cricket world.

But for all this drama, it’s important to remember the alternative.

What if he’d recalled the English keeper, who cluelessly left his crease and paid the ultimate price when Carey acted with instinctive cunning and stumped him? What if we’d lost?

The ugly truth is that Cummins’ — and the rest of the Aussie team’s — grip on the Australian public remains on a knife’s edge that teeters depending on the direction of the wind and the amount of matches won.

The vitriol and condemnation of a foreign country — even one that weaponises the Barmy Army — is nothing compared to the pitchforks and torches that would have re-appeared from his very own supporters.

The squeaky-clean “Winx” of Australian cricket has done everything in his power to push the Aussie team’s fight to win back the hearts and minds of the Aussie public — but for reasons that are difficult to quantify, the support largely hasn’t come.

It is rudely inappropriate to compare the Bairstow incident with what infamously happened in Cape Town when South African TV cameras spotted Cameron Bancroft with sandpaper in the wild 2018 Tour of South Africa. But here it is anyway.

The spectre of the ball-tampering scandal remains hovering over the Aussie men’s cricket team’s dressing room.

The image that has rocked cricket. Photo by Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images.

Promoted to Test captain following another scandal which saw Tim Paine resign from office, Cummins was given the task of restoring the prestige and aura of the Aussie cricket team as a source of national pride.

As with all things, every rusted on cricket tragic will have a very different opinion on what they want to see to have pride in Cummins and his men.

It’s why Cummins, largely through no fault of his own, is a divisive figure.

Mud sticks and some things are not forgotten.

It was just eight months ago there was a stench coming from the Aussie dressing room. They were a team on the nose with the average punter. It only takes an incident like Bairstow’s dismissal for the skeletons in Cummins’ closet to be exposed.

Australia’s T20 World Cup flop opened the door for cricket fans to tell us how they really felt — and the answer was uglier than Cricket Australia could have ever imagined.

Cricket greats, including former Test captain Michael Clarke and allrounder Simon O’Donnell, at the time highlighted a sentiment that the Aussie team is simply not liked by the average punter. It certainly didn’t help that Glenn Maxwell said at the time the team’s early exit “doesn’t mean anything”.

O’Donnell traced it back to the storm that surrounded Justin Langer’s resignation as coach of the Australian team.

At the time, Aussie great Mitchell Johnson labelled Cummins “gutless” and accused him of undermining Langer behind the scenes. Langer resigned after being pushed out the door by an “insulting” short-term contract extension offer that followed rumours the players wanted him gone because of his intense and over-demanding leadership style. Another red flag for many Aussie fans.

People don’t forget. Photo by Mark Kolbe - CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images.

“The Langer thing is big in this,” O’Donnell said.

“People didn’t like how that happened. Justin Langer was much loved. And that unceremonious dumping of the coach and the players’ activity behind the scenes, that has left a sour taste in a lot of people’s mouth.”

Mark Waugh called for Cummins to be dropped.

Michael Clarke was damning in his assessment calling the team “un-Australian”.

He said it seems fans were happy the Australian team failed.

“At the moment it feels like there is a real dislike for the Aussie team,” he said in November.

“I want to see that change. We’ve already got messages this morning. So many people are happy that Australia lost. There’s still angst around Justin Langer being sacked, or resigning, whatever happened there. There’s still angst around our style of play and how we’re playing.

“I think the fans feel like they’ve been left out.

“Australian cricket has alway tried to be the No. 1 team in the country, yet we’re nowhere near that now.”

For Cummins, there is also the case of him being widely attacked — and being labelled a hypocrite by some — for his role in Cricket Australia losing a $40 million sponsorship agreement with Alinta Energy after he registered concerns about the energy giant’s parent company and the fact it did not align with his views as a climate change activist.

What does all this have to do with Cummins leading his team at Headingley in the Third Test?

It has left Cummins potentially more scrutinised than any of his predecessors — at a time when fans have never been so happy to pull the trigger with angry messages on social media or take offence to anything that goes against their view of the so-called “spirit of cricket”.

There’s two sides out there — and they’re both playing cricket. Photo by Gareth Copley/Getty Images.

That’s a helluva place to be coming from when you consider Cummins’ job is to be an elite athlete. This is sport. It’s not a serious political matter like Free Trade Agreement negotiations at 10 Downing Street or the even more serious matter of Albo having the gall to enjoy an ice cream at the Australian Open this summer when Alice Springs was in meltdown.

The Aussie Prime Minister’s comments this week about the Bairstow dismissal show Cummins has come a long way — but still has a long road ahead.

It was a very different tone to the one used by former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull when talking about the Aussie team after Sandpapergate.

“This cheating is a disgrace, we all know that, it is a terrible disgrace,” Turnbull said.

“Where do we want to get to? I’ll tell you where we want to get to, we want to get to the point where we can all say once again, not rhetorically but heartfelt and with sincerity, that cricket is a fair game, cricket is a game that is synonymous with a fair go and fair play, that’s what has to happen.”

Here’s what Albo is saying five years later — after what is arguably the biggest test of character the game has faced since the ugly scenes of Bancroft, Steve Smith and David Warner facing the press in tears.

“Same old Aussies – always winning!” Albanese said in a tweet as Australia went 2-0 up on England with victory in the Second Test invoking cries of English fans at Lord’s that Aussies are “always cheating”.

“I’m proud of our men’s and women’s cricket teams, who have both won their opening two Ashes matches against England.”

There is your national pride.