How woeful Wallaby slur motivated Cummins’ world beaters

They’re humble this mob, they don’t need a bus and a ticker-tape, but they sure kept receipts of some critics.

The aww shucks, you know it was nothing, vibe Pat Cummins gave off as he pushed a lonely trolley through Sydney Airport in the worst ever welcome home parade a World Cup winning cricket captain has ever had was one thing.

They’re humble this mob, they don’t need a bus and a ticker-tape, but they’re proud to. You don’t get this far in sport without having a lot of belief in yourself.

This side has been criticised for not having enough shit in them, but don’t believe that for a second.

They don’t snap or snarl on the field, as a rule they don’t talk big in press conferences or call out their enemies, but some at least do “keep the receipts”.

It is probably not their finest trait, but given the criticism they’ve copped and the motivation they’ve gained from the practice, it is understandable.

Adam Zampa used the phrase when he posted Michael Clarke’s assessment after the first two matches that the team would find itself in as much trouble as the Wallabies should they continue in that manner.

Zampa told CricBuzz during the tournament that he likes to make note of what the critics say and use it as motivation. He had, he said, begun the practice when a schoolteacher scoffed at his chances of playing cricket for Australia and it became a team thing when he read “the receipts” out after they had won the T20 World Cup in 2021.

He read out the new ones in the celebrations following the 2023 victory in Ahmedabad.

Oh to be a fly on the wall.

Zampa was targeted at the start of the tournament for his form and apparent lack of patriotism, but he was not alone. Few rated the team’s chances and fair enough too, they did not assemble their first choice side or play their best cricket until the tournament was well underway.

Champions win World Cups and this mob didn’t measure up for most.

At least twice in the World Cup the players were told they weren’t as good as the other side. Joe Root went first, claiming before the group match against Australia that “man for man I’d have this team every day over the Australians”. David Warner and Marnus Labuschagne scoffed, Usman Khawaja suggested the former England skipper was talking about being morally superior and we all know how the game played out.

Former Indian player Mohammed Kaif dared go there after Australia after beating the hosts in the final. “I can never accept that the best team has won the World Cup. The Indian team is the better team on paper,” he said on Star Sports.

There was some surprise that the Indians didn’t, as Rohit Sharma had after they’d been beaten by Cummins’ men in the World Test Championship, suggest these matters are best decided in a best of three play off.

To be fair to Rohit, he was gracious in defeat both times and the comment needed some context.

Players, you can rightly suspect, aren’t the only ones keeping receipts in these scenarios.

Note would have been made of Matthew Hayden’s comments about the side’s coaches and support staff curing the tournament.

“What’s quite interesting is that there’s not a former great that is actually at the helm of Australian cricket. Not one,” Hayden told Wisden Cricket Monthly.

“Not as a chairman of selectors, not as a coach, not as a board director. At no layer is there leadership that’s got a former great player of Australian cricket operating within that team unit.

“That, to me, is surprising considering we’ve just come out of three great eras or decades of Australian cricket.”

Chairman of selectors is George Bailey.

Coach is Andrew McDonald, assistants number among others Michael Di Venuto, Andy Borovec and Dan Vettori.

The ugly divorce of former coach Justin Langer opened a fissure between some of the more outspoken players.

Hayden’s assessment would not have been missed by the coaching staff or the selector.

Bailey had a great cricket career that was capped off by playing five Ashes Tests against England in 2013-14, not quite as many as Haydos and his mates, but five more than most of us.

He played in 90 ODIs and captained Australia in its first match of the victorious 2015 World Cup side, scored a neat 55 against England at the MCG, but did not play another game as Michael Clarke returned.

Bailey and the three other supernumerary members of the squad appear in the picture of the winning team with the cup smiling like everyone else, part of it, but maybe not.

He and his fellow selectors must be enormously satisfied with what they achieved when the players posed for a picture with the 2023 trophy, this was, after all, a coup.

The 2023 World Cup campaign by the Australians was almost perfect in its planning and execution. Players, selectors and coaches held their nerve while it seemed the whole cricket world doubted them.

The selectors’ decision to play half the tournament with 14 men while they waited for Travis Head to get fit was outstanding and the decision to enter it with one specialist spinner was bold.

They are now getting the praise they deserve.

And the players? Well there’s more than one of them who has earned themselves rights to the legends club.

Ricky Ponting lauded Cummins efforts, saying he had been “faultless” in the finals. Tim Paine went further.

“I don’t think there was a thing last night that Pat Cummins got wrong. He was outstanding and he deserves a lot of credit for that,” he told SEN.

“I thought Pat Cummins had one of the great games as the captain and then when he bowled, that’s as good as I have seen him for a while.”

Paine had been nervous at the start of the tournament and questioned some selections, but accepted he was wrong.

“I think last night actually gives this generation of Australian cricketers the credit they deserve,” Paine told SEN Whateley.

“Some of the guys we’ve seen in that team last night have won two World Cups, they’ve won a T20 World Cup, they’ve won the World Test Championship.

“This cements five or six of the players in that team last night as some of the absolute all-time greats of Australian cricket.

“I think over the last two or three years, they haven’t got that credit. Steve Smith, David Warner, Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Glenn Maxwell among others.

“There’s a list of those guys that will be remembered now.”