The Australian’s Australian of the Year: Pace ace Pat Cummins poised to bowl the judges over

Pat Cummins overcame major career setbacks to make cricket history as Australian skipper.

Victorious Test captain Pat Cummins with the Ashes trophy in Hobart on Monday after Australia wrapped up the series 4-0 on Sunday. Picture: Richard Jupe

Before making his remarkable Test debut at the age of 18, Patrick Cummins was already touted as one of the country’s rising stars.

After a brilliant career in junior and domestic cricket, participating in the Big Bash and Sheffield Shield, Cummins burst onto the global stage in Johannesburg in 2011, where he took a match total of seven wickets to set up a thrilling two-wicket win to square the series against South Africa.

With that performance, Cummins wrote himself into the history books, becoming Australia’s youngest Test cricketer since Ian Craig in 1953 to wear the baggy green, and the second youngest to take six wickets in an innings.

He was named man of the match and attracted attention across the cricketing world.

Born in 1993, Cummins grew up in Mount Riverview NSW, in the foothills of the Blue Mountains, with two brothers and two sisters. Obsessed with cricket from childhood, he idolised fast bowler Brett Lee and dreamt of one day playing in the Ashes. Cummins attended school at St Paul’s Grammar in western Sydney and – during a ­career hiatus from injury – studied business at the University of Technology Sydney under its elite athlete program.

At the age of three, he lost the top of his middle finger on his right hand when his sister accidentally slammed a door on it, but it has clearly made no impact on his cricket, with some teammates even suggesting it helps his bowling technique.

Soon after signing with Cricket Australia in 2011, disaster struck in the form of a heel injury. It marked the first of a series of injuries that would keep Cummins on the sidelines for almost six years.

“I was lucky cricket was patient with me, but I was desperate to get back to establish myself as an Aussie player,” Cummins told The Weekend Australian Magazine last November. “By 2017, I had been playing for Australia for six years but I still didn’t feel like a member of the team.”

More than five years after his Test debut in South Africa, Cummins launched a spectacular comeback. He played a dominant role in the 2017-18 Ashes series and went on to be appointed one of Australia’s two Test vice-captains in 2019, alongside Travis Head. And the accolades only continued after Cummins won the Allan Border Medal as the 2018-19 men’s cricketer of the year, and was subsequently named the No.1-ranked Test bowler in the world.

His elevation to Australia’s Test captaincy in November was hailed as a historic moment in Australian cricket, with Cummins becoming the first pure pace bowler to captain the side since 1956.

After leading Australia to a crushing Ashes victory this summer, the pace ace continues to assert his dominance as the world’s best fast bowler, making him a popular nomination for The Australian’s Australian of the Year.

Readers are encouraged to submit a nomination for The Australian’s Australian of the Year. Prominent Australians can be nominated by filling out the form, or emailing to [e-mail]. Nominations close on Friday, January 21.