Ashes 2023: Pat Cummins’ disappointment over drawn series

An hour after Australia officially retained the Ashes, captain Pat Cummins was in the outfield of the Oval, feeling bereft.

An hour after Australia officially retained the Ashes, captain Pat Cummins was in the outfield of the Oval, feeling bereft. Here he was being handed the famous little urn but he later admitted deep inside he could feel nothing but disappointment.

“I had just lost the game,” he said, after England levelled the series 2-2 by beating Australia by 49 runs in the fifth test.

Off to his right, his counterpart, the England captain Ben Stokes was busy chatting to his team, seemingly impervious to the significance of the moment.

While Cummins, 30 was struggling to keep up appearances for the cameras, putting his arm around his teammates it was Stokes who was the one with the broad grin and unbridled jubilation.

Said Stokes: “We had won the game, I’m pretty happy’’.

But as the record books show, 32-year-old Stokes didn‘t win the Ashes despite his aggressive leadership, and the Cummins-led Australians did enough, just, with the some help from the rain gods at Old Trafford to be able to have the trophy sit in seat 1A before heading back to Australia on a long flight home.

Cummins wisely noted that the current hollowness of retaining the Ashes may just be temporary and once the team had time to consider their seven week tour, they may feel very differently. Even the confetti cannons, scheduled to unleash a storm of paper upon the team, didn’t fire.

“We’ll save them for later,’’ Cummins quipped.

Pat Cummins (C) holds the urn trophy as Australia celebrate the drawn series and retaining The Ashes. Picture: AFP.

But on reflecting on the emotions of the series, he said: “It was just one of those kinds of series where every game was really close. We got on the right end of it for the first two games and then, unfortunately we couldn’t quite get over the line in the last few. It is so disappointing. … we just didn’t get it done. There are lots of key moments that we just didn’t quite get right.

“I think because we’ve had really good series (earlier) at home the bar is raised a little bit and then coming over here and retaining the Ashes feels like a little bit of missed opportunity.’’

He paused and then added: “But in 2019 we were all pretty happy about a retained ashes …. Once we reflect on it, we will be proud. But when we got up today we were hoping to make it 3-1.”

Stokes for his part said it would have been “an almighty train wreck” if England had not won this final match.

In 2019 Australia retained the Ashes for the first time since 2001, fighting back to gain a 2-1 series lead after winning the fourth Test.

While there were hugely controversial moments in the series: the catch that wasn’t at Lord’s, and the cheap stumping of Jonny Bairstow out of his crease; Cummins said the series was “amazing’’.

“I think that’s been one of the best things about the last eight weeks,’’ he said.

“I just walk around the streets, even when you always kind of expect one idiot every now and then, but honestly there hasn’t been any of them in the streets. Everyone’s been amazing and just been talking about the cricket and how much they’ve loved it. I know it‘s the same in Australia, big viewers, lots of people interested in the cricket, so it doesn’t get any better than that.’’