NZ v Australia Test: Sum of Australia’s parts build a legacy like no other under Pat Cummins
For all the positive results Pat Cummins and his team have generated, quite routinely as well, it’s safe to say they don’t completely fit the stereotype of a dominant Australian Test team.
Saturdays are when fans are encouraged to “dress up” during a Test match in New Zealand. There are even some major prizes on offer for the best costumes. For the record, I lost out to an 8-year-old dressed like a fox. It didn’t feel fair in the moment, but he did have a better routine. I, of course, participated in the contest, or marked my attendance anyway, as myself.
The Australian team, too, arrived at the Basin Reserve playing themselves. Literally and in terms of being true to their own respective identities. It’s the team ethos that Pat Cummins and the coaching staff under Andrew McDonald have built around their dressing-room. For everyone in it to embrace and take pride in their own individual identities. On and off the field.
It does attract some criticism for sure, especially every time a match or series doesn’t go their way. Or when a player or players end up in a rough trot with bat or ball. But if anything, the World Cup win being the best recent example of it, the freedom of expression that has been developed within the Australian camp only seems to benefit the overall outcomes for this team. And largely, if you leave out a couple of reversals, the Cummins era is bathed in success.
What if we zoom out a little, though, and let the mind wander and wonder about what the collective identity of this Australian team could be.
While sport always demands and thrives on discussions over legacies, the creation of a legacy does depend on firstly finding and identifying your own identity. Whether you are an athlete – and more so for a national team. While also never succumbing to the identity built externally for you or one that’s demanded of you.
It only becomes even more of a thing when you hail from a culture that has a rich history of teams being defined by strong identities. Rather than solely by outcomes and results.
An Australian cricket team, after all, is simply expected to not only win a lot, but also dominate all the way through. To be able to create an indomitable aura that both intimidates the opposition and endows not only those on the field but also those supporting them with a sense of ultimate supremacy. But for all the positive results Cummins and his team have generated, quite routinely as well, it’s safe to say they don’t completely fit the stereotype of a dominant Australian Test team.
They win, yes. But they don’t always run completely roughshod over their opponents, home and away. They get into strong positions, yes. But they don’t always kill the game as mercilessly as often as the narrative around the Steve Waugh-led team would suggest that generation did.
Perhaps the third day’s play in Wellington was a good illustration of that fact. They’d started the day with an overwhelming lead in the game, ahead by 217 runs and with eight wickets in hand. Here was a chance to really pummel the New Zealanders into submission on the back of one of their worst days in recent memory. Bat big, bat long, and completely deflate them by setting a target beyond even their wildest imaginations.
However, they never found a partnership or a batter who looked keen on doing that. Most of the wickets that fell, especially the ones to Glenn Phillips’s off-spin, came through ultra-aggressive shots that seemed to suggest they felt like whatever they had on the board was enough.
Chances are they will be proven right, but you do wonder if today was also an illustration that perhaps there might be scenarios where they potentially could rein in the extent to which they want the individuals to be true to their nature and, rather, figure out a more pragmatic team approach that benefits the bigger picture.
Having said all that, the fact is they do keep finding ways of winning so there should really be no laments over how they go about framing their victories. They might be guilty of leaving the door ajar, as they probably have here in Wellington, for the opposition to not lose hope completely.
The great legacy of the most celebrated Australian team was built on allcomers being left to feel hopeless and hapless when confronted with that juggernaut. But till that time comes for this team, as Cummins and his fellow bowlers keep jamming the door shut when it matters most, not being considered cerebral shouldn’t concern them or any of their supporters. From a neutral perspective, it’s only made for more exciting Test matches.
Take the home summer, one which was built as a virtual thoroughfare for the World Test champions to regain that form of historical invincibility. But after a comprehensive win in Perth, every other Test saw Australia fighting back from precarious positions to set up wins or being dependent on some individual brilliance from the likes of Travis Head, Josh Hazlewood and captain Cummins himself to navigate a way out. And the defeat to the West Indies at the Gabba was the one time they failed to find that hero, even if Steve Smith did come very close.
Ironically, from the time they did boss the Indians in the World Test Championship final, most of their subsequent wins have come from positions where they’ve not been allowed to dictate terms. Or been in front. Whether it’s the dramatic run chase at Edgbaston or the come-from-behind wins in Melbourne and Sydney. And if they were to get over the line at the Basin Reserve, they would have done so with more than 40 per cent of their overall runs having been scored by their two No. 4s, one of them being the topscoring Nathan Lyon.
Maybe that is how their identity could be defined, then, as being a team enriched with multiple and unique identities, each empowered and motivated to be the best versions of themselves in the quest of creating an overall legacy that will not impede or take away from who they really are. While of course continuing to win, without ever worrying about perceptions. They can leave that for those competing on Dress-Up Days, in fox-clothing or otherwise.
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