Why Pat Cummins had to change his captaincy style post-Ashes

The moment Pat Cummins accepted the learning process and that a brutal experience could make him a better captain, things changed. He opens up on a big 12 months.

Through the helter skelter haze of ‘Bazball’, Pat Cummins saw one point very clearly – he had to change as a captain.

The Australian skipper has opened up about his leadership heroics at the World Cup and admitted that he had to learn lessons from mistakes made during the Ashes.

Cummins was called out during key moments in the epic Ashes series for failing to react quick enough to the bold tactics being weaponised by Ben Stokes and England’s Baz Ballers.

But rather than get his back up about the criticism, Cummins’ accepted that captaincy is a learning process and that he could become a better skipper from the brutal experience of almost letting a 2-0 lead slip as England squared the series.

Cummins had barely ever captained a game of cricket before being thrust into the hot seat as Australia’s first fast bowling skipper since Ray Lindwall in 1956.

And one of his greatest attributes is his humility and capacity for self-evaluation, as within a couple of months, Cummins turned Ashes frustration into the greatest World Cup triumph of all time.

Pat Cummins was criticised for some of his decisions during the Ashes. Picture: Stu Forster/Getty Images

“I think with playing more, your intuition gets better,” Cummins told this masthead.

“I felt like I could manage myself a bit better by the end of the Ashes.

“Do my planning, know what I need to do. But also just make sure I leave some headspace to think on my feet.

“I think I did that better in the World Cup. Just reacting a bit quicker when I needed to.”

Cummins’ decision to bowl first in the World Cup final against India in front of 100,000 fans in Ahmedabad will go down as one of the bravest and most brilliant calls in Australian cricket history.

“Absolutely outstanding,” fast bowling great Brett Lee said of Cummins’ impact as a bowling captain.

“Whatever he touched turned to gold. I thought he caught India off guard. India were not expecting that.

“When they lost the toss they thought, ‘We’ll go out and bat, put 350 on the board’ and that’s what normally happens in that set up.

“Runs on the board in the final.

“But Pat Cummins’ captaincy is outstanding. He backs his players and he’s having a wonderful career as a fast bowler, but certainly as a captain.”

Cummins went against conventional wisdom and clinched the World Cup. Picture: Saeed Khan/AFP

Cummins said he simply took emotion out of the decision and listened to the advice of the analysts who laid out clear data that bowling first in Ahmedabad was the correct course of action.

And don’t be surprised if you see Cummins’ go against conventional wisdom in this Test summer and choose to bowl first as well.

Cummins says it’s a misnomer that teams should automatically think that runs on the board is the best path to victory in modern cricket.

“It’s a bit the same with Test cricket. The traditional wisdom is you’ve got to bat first. You look at the stats and more teams win bowling first than batting first,” Cummins said.

“The way the wickets are nowadays, batting fourth innings probably isn’t as scary as what it was 10 years ago.

“Traditional wisdom doesn’t always match up with what we feel as players out there.

“The narrative has changed even over the last five years. (Previously), if you won the toss and bowled, you used to feel like you had to bowl them out for under 100.

“Now it’s just simply, we think this is the best way to win the game. They might bat all day but we’ll chase down whatever we need to.

“The same with one-day cricket. The last, at least five one-day World Cups that I can think of, have all been won by batting second.

“Same with the T20 World Cup that we won, and the last T20 World Cup, won by (the England) team chasing.

“I don’t think players really fear chasing and in some ways it sets up OK you can plot a path to victory a bit easier knowing what you’ve got to do.

“In some ways in a big final, as a bowler you’re bowling first. There’s high pressure. But if you make one mistake it doesn’t really matter.

“As a batter, if you make one mistake it’s fatal. I quite like bowling first.”

Originally published as Why Pat Cummins had to change his captaincy style post-Ashes