Captain Pat Cummins has broken the mould

Pat Cummins has had a successful first year as Australia’s Test captain, writes Gideon Haigh. Picture: Getty Images

This time last year, Pat Cummins was leading Australia onto the field for the first time, against England at the Gabba. He was 28: the average age for such promotions. Almost everything else about his ascent was unusual: his previous experience was negligible; his predecessor had been coerced into resignation; his appointed deputy was the previous incumbent.

Above all, Cummins was a fast bowler, and it was widely held that fast bowlers could not also captain – a notion based mainly on that they seldom had. It is worth noting how rapidly this receded from received wisdom to old-fashioned taboo, much as Tim Paine rendered the taboo on keeper captains redundant. Cricket theories are only ever one exception away from retirement.

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Today, Cummins marks his anniversary by … not playing. But it provides an opportunity to evaluate his first year in the job, which on the ledger at least is hard to fault: six wins, three draws, one defeat.

Cummins’ personal performances have been sustained also: he has retained the mantle of the world’s number one ranked bowler, held for more than three years, seen his batting average rise a bit and shaved a little off his bowling average. His new role as Australia’s one-day international captain commenced with a solid series victory against England.

So why the modified rapture? We sometimes forget how every captain has a chorus of critics: Border was too grumpy, Waugh was too ruthless, Taylor was out of form with the bat at length. Ponting was suspect for his temper, Clarke for his metrosexuality, even Smith suspect for his self-absorption.

Tim Paine then stepped in without ever quietening those who deemed him a caretaker. The Test captaincy is sometimes likened to the prime ministership, and one parallel is that there always exists a version of his majesty’s loyal opposition.

Nowadays, I suspect, this effect is heightened by the sheer intensity of media coverage, mainstream and social: the more we see of a figure, the quicker we sicken of them. And no Australian athlete is so visible and in demand as the Test captain.

One of Cummins’ problems now, I suspect, is that we set such a low bar for athletes expressing interest in anything beyond their immediate ken.

Frolic visibly with your offspring and you become father of the year candidate; smell a flower and you become a passionate conservationist; for supporting a seemingly harmless charity called Cricket for Climate, Cummins has come to be regarded as advocating for the abolition of electricity.

Interestingly, Steve Smith, David Warner, Marnus Labuschagne, Mitchell Starc and Alyssa Healy have also lent their names to the same charity. Only Cummins engenders any hostility. Odd, really.

Pat Cummins has borne the brunt of resentment held by those unhappy with the treatment of former coach Justin Langer. Picture: Getty Images

It’s frequently complained that modern athletes lack hinterland; that they are dreary, narrow, overspecialised. Yet if they display interest beyond sport, they can equally count on being scolded to stay in their lane, to shut up and play. Damned if you do ….

Perhaps Cummins makes it look a little easy. Perhaps he is a little shiny-chinned and floppy-fringed. Intrinsic to the appeal of his English counterpart Ben Stokes is a redemption arc. Stokes punches things, including people. He lost his father; he almost lost his way. Who knows? Cummins might even benefit from a roughing of his smooth edges.

In the absence of anything much else, Cummins has become tarred with the brush that swept out Justin Langer as Australian coach in January, commonly depicted as an unprecedented assertion of player power in team management.

It actually has a very obvious precedent. In May 1996, the Australian Cricket Board opted not to renew the contract of its first, possibly best and certainly most influential coach, Bob Simpson.

Simpson’s charter had not been unlike Langer’s: a push to retrieve Australia’s cricket team from a crisis of values. Simpson’s long tenure had been underpinned by a strong relationship with captain Allan Border, to whom the organisational and external dimensions of leadership did not come naturally.

When then Australian skipper Mark Taylor wanted a change of coach from Bob Simpson in the mid-1990s, there was barely a murmur of discontent

Then the captaincy changed hands. Mark Taylor was a different personality, and in his own words “keen to have a bit more of a hands-on role”. And though the Australian team ascended Test cricket’s summit in 1995 during Simpson’s watch, defeating West Indies in the Caribbean, Taylor “thought it was time for him to go” because “I felt I didn’t need a domineering coach.”

It’s striking in hindsight how little objection Simpson’s replacement by Geoff Marsh occasioned. In the minutes of the Australian Cricket Board, the change occupies two lines. There were no accusations of disloyalty against Taylor; there were no squalls of public resentment from Simpson, even though he received no more detailed rationale that that it was “time for a change.”

Interestingly, one player who felt strongly was Steve Waugh, although he waited until retirement to state in his autobiography: “The total absence of a farewell to Simmo from the ACB after he lost the coaching job … was a disgrace. We, the players, should have stepped into the breach to rectify this mistake.”

But about the change itself, even Waugh held no reservations: Marsh was “the perfect coach to work with” Taylor, being “a laid-back guy who offered support more than vision.”

Perhaps history, as it’s wont to, rhymed earlier this year. Langer was owed more by CA and by the team, a little quick to forget how much his reputation, consideration and personal decency protected them in the wake of Sandpapergate.

Yet the role of coach in a cricket team, as distinct from a football team, is necessarily anterior to that of captain, and change is too often left until after it has become absolutely necessary. In any event, cricket, in its never-ending search to find grounds for complaint, has made unduly heavy weather of change.

John Inverarity had this acute line on Australian captains, that they all, eventually, go a bit mad. Perhaps this fate will befall Cummins too. But so far at least, he continues sounding pretty sane – saner anyway than some of his detractors.