Pat Cummins puts his money on David Warner rebound

Australia is hoping David Warner will bounce back the way he did with a double hundred at the MCG

Australian captain Pat Cummins at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi ahead of the second Test starting on Friday. Picture: Getty Images.

Australia is hoping David Warner will bounce back the way he did with a double hundred at the MCG, but if the camp is confident of its best XI a day before the second Test at Delhi they are doing their best to hide it.

The fitness of Cameron Green and Mitchell Starc was still being monitored. And three spinners was an option, which would mean Starc wouldn’t play.

Another failure at Delhi will ­increase the pressure on selectors to drop Warner, although replacing him would pose more ­problems.

Pat Cummins says the opener’s double hundred in the Boxing Day match is a guide to how dangerous he remains, ­despite a poor run in recent years and a poor record in India.

“I’m not a selector,” the captain said. “I don’t think they’ve had a (selection) meeting, but I’m sure Davey will be there. You saw this year at the Boxing Day Test: when he puts pressure back on the opposition he’s pretty hard to bowl to.

“You don’t get as many good balls, so he knows that.

“I’m sure that’d be part of his plan. He has been batting really well here. Even in the lead up I thought he was fantastic. I know there’s a lot of talk about spin bowling through the middle but with that new ball it’s sometimes the hardest time to bat as well.”

Cummins conceded Green was essential to the balance of the side, but hinted at doubts about his ­recovery from a broken finger. “Having a right hander helps and him providing our fifth bowling option also helps, he’s a big player, it certainly helps the team function well from batting and bowling,” he said.

“You have got to be able to perform as well. He’s still coming back from that injury, he’s only had a couple of sessions where he’s catching with a hard ball. He had a really good session yesterday. We will see how he pulls up.”

Cummins also indicated that the team was open to bringing in either Matthew Kuhnemann or Ashton Agar at the expense ­of Mitchell Starc – but that would depend on Green’s fitness.

With the exception of Steve Smith, Australia’s batsman looked like they entered the first innings in Nagpur with little knowledge of how to handle the conditions or the first spinners – and the second with even less idea how to go about it.

Plan B proved worse than Plan A.

Coach Andrew McDonald said later that the side had let scoreboard pressure get to them in the second innings and they needed to return to the original plan of taking the game on.

In the disastrous 2016 tour of Sri Lanka Warner highlighted a shift in philosophy that occurred during the three-Test series, saying on arrival that you had to be “patient” and wait for the boundary balls before the approach changed to “You’ve got to think out of the box. If you defend, one’s got your name on it … you’re a sitting duck when you’re facing six balls in a row”.

Warner scored just two runs from 38 balls in the second innings at Nagpur, then struck two boundaries before being trapped LBW by Ravi Ashwin.

Cummins was asked about the discussions in the batting group since the innings loss.

“They’ve been really good, the batters have been fantastic, it’s not too different to leading in,” he said.

“I think the planning has been really good and now it’s about going out there and doing it,” he said.

“At times that might be brave enough to take a calculated risk when the risk might be a little bit higher than in Australia, they’ve been really good, they’re all really strong in their plans, trained really well, so we will see how we go.

“When you’re ahead of the game over here, it’s really hard for the opposition to get themselves back in. That’s going to be the challenge if we are behind at times – how can we put pressure back into their dressing room? Once you put pressure back on the bowlers, suddenly you don’t get as many good balls and the scoreboard keeps ticking over, fields change. So that’s certainly been part of the discussions.

“You’re gonna fail over here – it’s about failing the right way. These conditions are tough. If that’s our best chance, be taking the game on, someone taking a calculated risk, if it doesn’t come off, that’s totally fine. No stress.”

Failing the right way, it turns out, is a concept taught in business schools. Cummins spent his lengthy injury break completing a bachelor of business at the University of Technology Sydney’s elite athletes program.