From being under the pump as the captain of the Australian Test and ODI sides to being a bona fide match-winner across formats, Pat Cummins has lived it all in a matter of 12 months
Last Updated: 08.09 PM, Dec 29, 2023
It's been a year of glory for the Australian men's cricket team and to make things only better, it was their skipper Pat Cummins who has led them from the front.
The 30-year-old bowling all-rounder has had a dream run as the captain of the Test and ODI teams with multiple marquee trophy wins, including the World Test Championship and the ODI World Cup only a couple of months ago. If the final of the latter tournament saw Cummins put on a great show with the ball against the nearly-infallible Team India, he also got the job done with the bat against the Bazball English team in the first Test of the Ashes 2023.
The perfect cherry-on-top moment for the year occurred when he clinched the close contest against Pakistan in Australia's favour in the Boxing Day test. Alongside, Pat Cummins became the first Australian captain to score two-fifers in a single Test and also only the second Aussie skipper after Alan Border with a Test fifer.
It's certainly a year to remember for ages for the New South Wales player who began 2023 with a home series win against South Africa (2-0). This would be followed by possibly one of his biggest tests as a captain at that point when he led Australia in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy against India, in India. The tour began on a rather dull note for him as his team lost back-to-back matches against the home side and before he could etch out a comeback plan, he was compelled to return home to be with his mother.
Pat's mother Maria passed away on March 10th, 2023, following a prolonged period of illness and if there's one moment that he would like to rewrite in the nearly spotless script for 2023, it would perhaps be that.
A personal tragedy, though, wasn't to keep him away from the game and he made a comeback in June earlier this year for the mega World Test Championship final against India at The Oval. Even though he wasn't at his best with the ball, he nevertheless marshalled his troops well enough to win his first major ICC trophy as the Australian skipper.
The biggest test, though, was yet to come for Pat Cummins and the Ashes came knocking right on cue. His team were the visitors yet again but this was the Ben Stokes-led Bazball team we are talking about, so, the challenge was amplified multifold even before the first ball was bowled. Cummins had flown largely under the radar up till this point with his captaincy not yet making any prominent impressions on the cricketing world. But it's tough to keep great players quiet for long, they say, and as soon as the moment arrived for him to step up, he did so with flair.
Asked to chase down 281 in the fourth innings of the first test of the Ashes, Australia were looking down the barrel at 7 for 209 when Usman Khawaja, the set batter, was dismissed. Cummins would then take charge and strike a superb 44 to lead his team over the line and make a thumping start to what would turn out to be a scintillating Test series.
The rest of Ashes 2023, of course, was another story altogether. While Australia managed to take the lead to 2-0 in the series with the Lord's win, the match saw the 'Jonny Bairstow runout' controversy crop up and place Pat Cummins at the centre of it all. Cummins fielded all the criticism like he always does and never let his cards show, revealing his first true signs of growth both as a player and also as a skipper.
But the Ashes wasn't as one-sided as he would have liked and it was going to be tough to keep the rejuvenated English team down for long anyway. Winning the third test in a close contest, England drew the next game and won the final one to level the series at 2-2 - regardless, Pat Cummins' Australia retained the urn and narrowly escaped a major defeat.
There was one more challenge left for the Baggy Green in 2023 and it came in the form of Pakistan. Sailing past Babar Azam's team in the first Test and winning the game by a whopping 360 games, the Australian men's unit looked at its menacing best and there seemed no blip along the way. Pakistan, though, can never be ruled out of a contest and the second test fared slightly differently, but Australia held their own in the crucial moments to win the game by 79 runs.
If his tryst with the red ball wasn't rewarding enough, Pat Cummins has made heads turn with his performance in white-ball cricket as well. Most importantly, he was at his absolute best in the all-important CWC Final against Rohit Sharma's India in Ahmedabad, picking 2 important wickets of Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer in the match (giving only 34 runs in 10 overs).
Aside from that, he was picked up by the Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL 2024 auctions for a huge price of Rs. 20.5 crores, beating his former best of Rs. 15.50 crores when he was bought by the Kolkata Knight Riders in 2020. Cummins' countryman Mitchell Starc was picked by KKR this time around for another jaw-dropping price of Rs. 24.75 crores.