Hyderabad: Australia skipper Pat Cummins has been vocal while voicing his opinions around social issues including climate change and the 'Yes' vote in the Voice to Parliament referendum and the Black Lives Matter movement as well. The pacer has once again asserted his views surrounding the players taking a knee and has backed the movement stating he is firm on his stand.
"If I don't stay strong on this and I pander to a loud minority, that's not a good thing," Cummins said in an interview with host Sarah Ferguson on ABC.
The 33-year-old also shared his experience of leading the side under pressure in India "where cricket is like a religion and their players are like Gods". "It's crazy. When families or friends come up for the first time, they can't believe that a thousand people waiting outside the hotel for the team bus on the way to the ground and fans in their Indian jerseys, walking the street every day of the week, cheering for every single ball that happens in a cricket match. I think sometimes we get a little bit immune to it but when you step back and hear other people's stories, you're like, okay, this is wild," he said.
The pacer said he knew all about the prevailing belief that batting is the preferred choice in finals, but then he was also aware of the recent trends that brought success to sides bowling first in the last five ODI finals. “Of course, you sound out other people,” he said. “Everyone was pretty sure it just felt like a bowling day.”
There is this common notion in cricket that batting first and putting up a score is the way to go about things in the final. However, Cummins did not budge and decided to trust his instincts. This decision proved to be a winning one, as Australia secured their sixth Cricket World Cup title in front of close to 100,000 fans in Ahmedabad.
Cummins, one of the rare breed of captains who are pacers, defied conventional wisdom that a bowler couldn't captain Australia. He led his team to win the ODI World Cup, retain the Ashes, and claim the World Test Championship this year.
Cummins also expressed confidence in his ability to make on-the-fly decisions and noted the improvement in his intuition in his two-year leadership span. “I trust myself that when I’m out there I can work things out on the fly and the intuition’s gotten better over a couple of years,” he said. “Whereas when I first started, I probably didn’t have as big a gut feel. And you try to over-plan and overthink things before they actually happen.”
The captain was leading the way for Australia even when their campaign looked dead and buried after the first 2 losses. It was his spell against India in the middle overs in the final that turned the match around. In World Cup 2023, Cummins picked 15 wickets at an economy of 5.75 in 11 games while playing some crucial knocks including one against Afghanistan where he scored just 12 runs from 68 balls.
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