All hail King Pat

Pat Cummins throws his bat after hitting the winning runs at Edgbaston in the opening Ashes test match.

It’s official. Pat Cummins is King of Australia. At last, a monarchy we can believe in.

Our freshly crowned monarch has had his fair share of detractors in Australia based on the nonsense that Australia’s elite cricketers should not be independent thinkers. Rather Cummins should appear puppet-like, mouthing the scripted words of corporate sponsors.

The argument goes that if cricketers like Cummins decline to become mouthpieces for corporate sponsors, then it is merely a matter of time before the sponsors walk away, taking their millions with them.

Well, who would like to sponsor the Australian Test team today? The queue forms to the right. Take a number.

One wag suggested that in order to fire Cummins up, the Australian skipper should be told that the England opener, Zac Crawley often left the lights on in his home when he popped out, cooked with gas, drove a Humvee, and was a carbon-emitting environmental vandal. The Koch brothers rolled into one under a blue lid.

More traditional means were called upon to send Crawley packing who, after spanking the first ball of the series to the cover boundary in what commentators decided was “series defining”, found out that it wasn’t and was nicked off by Scott Boland twice.

In these days of hyper-partisanship, glass-jawed cricket lovers whose default position is anger and the assumption of offence, decided to turn their backs on Test cricket as long as Cummins was tossing the coin. Social media blazed with statements of the “I’m done” and “He’s killin’ the game” type.

I can’t even begin to understand the reasoning behind it. For cricket lovers, it is more than self-denial. It is an act of psychic self-harm for no good end.

Cummins’ teammates applaud their skipper as he leaves the field.

Back in the day of World Series Cricket. My father hinted at contrived results, declaring on numerous occasions that there were only two sports on which the bookies would not take a bet – the Kerry Packer created World Series Cricket and professional wrestling. To this day, I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ve never had a bet on the Undertaker to win the Royal Rumble just in case.

My father imposed a one-man boycott on World Series Cricket. He certainly wasn’t on his own. He was just one of a number of cricket lovers of his vintage. Men who had grown up in depression-era Australia where Sir Donald Bradman and the ACB traditionalists who denied cricketers a living wage, could do no wrong.

He decided early on that World Series Cricket would not foul his field of vision. But we lived in a home where democracy ruled and when World Series Cricket was being played, the television was tuned to it. My father was left to harrumph into his newspaper while the great IVA Richards did battle with the magnificent DK Lillee.

Suffer my father did until one day Wayne Daniels smote a Mick Malone delivery not just over the boundary but into the Waverley stratosphere to win a famous 50 over game for the West Indies. In the immediate post-match hysteria, I caught my father peering over his newspaper.

He had crossed the picket line. The boycott was done. Peace in our time. At least in the living room.

Try telling Nigel Farage that sport and politics doesn’t mix. After Australia won the ICC Test World Championship against India at the Oval earlier in June, Farage tweeted, “Once again the Australian cricket team do not celebrate in champagne style because 1 of the team members is a Muslim.”

“Are we all to suspend normal life because of the minority?”

What Nigel Farage knows about cricket is anyone’s guess, but I’d suggest a postage stamp and a paint roller would be ample means to encapsulate the former UKIP’s intimate knowledge of the game.

An old cricket teammate texted me with a similarly inane remark concerning Khawaja as The Ashes got underway.

But by Sunday night my mate recanted. There is simply too much to admire about Usman Khawaja.

He has a Zen-like ability to stay in the present for hours on end. England will know now what the world already knew. If you don’t get Usman out early, there’s a very real chance he’ll bat all day. At Edgbaston, Usman was at the crease in all five days of play.

His numbers for Australia since his return to the team in the Sydney Test in 2022 are extraordinary.

In that time, Khawaja has played 18 Tests in three continents, scoring 1827 runs from 32 innings with seven 100s and eight 50s at an average of 63.00. While opening the batting.

Who would dare give a batter with those impressive figures an expletive-laden send off after they’ve made 140? That graceless feat was left to England seamer, Ollie Robinson who offered uninvited social and geographical advice to Khawaja after the Pakistan born Australian opener’s 321-ball, 478-minute stay at the crease.

Further evidence that Robinson is a slow learner came when the middling medium pacer trout-mouthed again to Khawaja again in the afternoon of the fifth day. Khawaja was not batting to his liking and let him know. Khawaja replied that he preferred to keep his own counsel on business arising with willow in hand.

“That’s why you’re not a batsman,” Khawaja replied, deadpan.

It was left to Jimmy Anderson to frog march Robinson from the confrontation.

Allan Border opined of Robinson’s first innings sledge that what goes around, comes around. If there are higher powers at work, they moved swiftly on this occasion. Karmic retribution rarely comes so fast.

Cummins lifts Nathan Lyon in the air after hitting the winning runs in the first Ashes test.

It’s better, I think, to dwell not on Robinson’s foul-mouthed interventions but on Joe Root who detoured from the England huddle to pat the shoulder of Khawaja and congratulate him on his first century on English soil.

By the way, what did we do to deserve Nathan Lyon? There must be something pure and wholesome in this nation’s rich history for an everyman like Lyon to emerge from the pack of hopefuls. A bloke from Young in central New South Wales, groundskeeper at Adelaide Oval now has 121 Tests under his belt and zeroing in on his 500th Test wicket.

A mate of mine had played third grade cricket in Canberra with Lyon more than a decade ago. Two years later he lamented that Lyon was playing for Australia while he had been consigned to the fourths. Alas, these things can go one of two ways but usually to the fourths.

A Test match for the ages has ended with Australia victorious. But if you allowed your politics and your sport to mix into a virulent cocktail of malice and self-imposed blindness, you missed it all.

The good news is there’s more to come. And you shouldn’t have to peer over the top of your newspaper to see it.