This was published 6 months ago
‘The hardest time of my life’: How grief and loss changed Pat Cummins
Pat Cummins has revealed that he felt he was losing time with his mother Maria every time he went away on tour in the year before her death with cancer last year.
In a frank interview for the Imperfects podcast, a year on from his journey home from India to share Maria’s final couple of weeks with the family, Cummins spoke of the way the experience had impacted how he leads Australia.
He also discussed the extent to which he tried to keep Maria's final days as private as possible by not initially explaining why he flew home after two Tests of last year's series in India.
“I knew when I was getting on that plane that I was going to have to come back in a couple of weeks pretty much,” Cummins said. “That was the hardest time of my life, easily. I probably felt it in the 12 months leading in. Any time I flew away I was like, ‘Time’s finite here, I’m making a deliberate choice to go and play somewhere rather than spend it at home’.
“But that time in particular – because we knew roughly the timeline, and knowing Mum and Dad as well; how much joy they get, sitting together, watching me play – that gave me enough confidence to go and play, and they were desperate for me to go and play, and I knew I could hop on a flight at any time and come back. But for those couple of weeks I was in India, especially now I look back on it, my mind was not in India, it was back home the whole time.”
For that time at home, Cummins said he wanted to remove himself completely from the role of national cricket captain and simply return to being a son, as he had been as a child.
“I remember my manager and a couple of other people around me who I normally listen to were calling me and being like, ‘I think we need to give a little bit of a reason why you’ve gone home’, and I’m like, ‘Nah, don’t care’, and he’s like, ‘Nah, you’re getting a lot of heat here, you’ve got to explain yourself’, and I was like, ‘I honestly do not care what people think’,” Cummins said.
“After about six or seven days when I knew I wasn’t going to come back to India, we said Mum’s in palliative care. But I literally could not have cared less what people were saying about me.
“Mum was a super private person, Dad is as well. So I know Mum wouldn’t want any attention at all. That was probably the main reason. But two, I just wanted to go back to being a kid. Just no one knows who you are; you’re just a son. I remember that for those two weeks [I was thinking], ‘I don’t want to go and play in front of millions of people and everything gets picked apart. I just want to be the kid who is sitting there with Mum and Dad’.”
The combination of Maria’s illness, and also the privations of playing and touring during two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, had a big influence on how Cummins and the team’s leaders have shaped the way the Australian team environment now functions. There is a heavy emphasis on giving players time to live their own lives, so there is less sense of wasting months away from home.
Pat Cummins shares a moment with son Albie on the hallowed turf of Lord’s after last year’s win in the second Ashes Test.Credit: Getty
“I’m not taking much credit for this, but even COVID had a big influence on the way we set up because I think for two years we were travelling around the world, stuck in hotel rooms, and you couldn’t do all the things you normally take for granted, and you miss a lot of these moments,” Cummins said.
“You miss parents getting sick, kids being born, weddings, even more so than we normally do.
“So our team in the last year or two are being really deliberate in [saying], ‘If we’re going to be away from our families, let’s make sure we’re having the time of our lives [and are] playing really good cricket. But it’s a game, [so] pack your golf clubs, bring the coffee machine, if you’re in London go and explore’. We’re trying to create as much space in the diary for people to be able to live their lives. Because a lot of the time during COVID when you’re touring you feel like you’re wasting time.
“That’s definitely another lesson I learned from Mum; I don’t want to waste any time. If I’m away, I want to make sure I’m still living life.”
A family photo of Pat Cummins with his mum Maria and sisters Laura and Kara.Credit: Instagram
Cummins also reflected on how Maria has remained ever present in his thinking and decisions over the past year, both on the field and off it.
“My experience over the last nine months is that she pops up every day,” Cummins said. “In decision-making, how you want to live your life, when things knock you around, you’re copping backlash, I think of her all the time, what would she say, what would she think, what would be her little bits of advice.
“But I’d say mostly through being a dad. How she was as a parent with us, things I used to love. You realise how many sacrifices they made as parents that you have to make as parents to give your child a good life, that you don’t fully appreciate as a child.”
Australia’s squad travelled from Wellington to Christchurch on Tuesday. The second Test begins at Hagley Oval on Friday.
News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.