Latest news with #PatCummins
Times of Oman
3 hours ago
- Business
- Times of Oman
Cummins confirms Steve Smith's batting position for Australia's WTC final
Melbourne: Australian skipper Pat Cummins said that star batter Steve Smith will be batting at number four during the much-anticipated ICC World Test Championship (WTC) final against South Africa at the Lord's. With the ICC World Test Championship Final 2025 fast approaching and set for June 11, Australia have zeroed in on an important batting decision. With multiple alternatives in contention to take the centre-stage, skipper Cummins has named batting icon Steve Smith to occupy a crucial spot in the middle order. In a recent conversation with The Grade Cricketer on Prime Video Australia, Cummins stated as quoted by ICC, "I can confirm that Smudge will be batting at four. Everyone else, I am not willing to, but I can confirm Steve Smith will be number four." Smith, who has batted most of his Test career at number four, boasts 6531 runs from 120 Test innings at the slot, averaging 61.61. This includes 23 centuries and 26 fifties. The veteran batter had also starred in Australia's triumph in the previous WTC Final in 2023, scoring a first-innings century that helped set the tone for a big win. As they prepare to defend the WTC mace, Cummins opened up on the prospect of becoming the first team to do so since the inception of the tournament in 2019. "After winning in 2023, there is a lot of talk of trying to retain it. Go and defend it. It is not tangible until you actually make the final," he said. "Now that we have made it, it will be pretty cool to win another ICC trophy. Playing at Lord's, it is a tournament that every other Test-playing nation is vying for so, it just signifies a pretty good couple of years," Cummins said. The Australian captain also highlighted the significance of the tournament and the challenges it presented. "I think it shows performance over two years. But there are varying conditions. Even in ICC World Cups, it is normally very similar conditions," he said. "A Test tournament, you have got to go and win basically everything at home, but for us, we had to go to Sri Lanka and win in tough spinning conditions," Pat Cummins said. "Go over to New Zealand, and beat a really strong side at home. So, I think it shows that you have really got to be a complete team over a couple-year stretch to make the final," he said. "We just missed out that first year (2019-2021), but I think we are a better side now than we were back then. We lost a couple of games at home. But, yeah, I think two (WTC titles) would be incredible. One, I think, is still a pretty good demonstration of how good we've been over the past few years," the Australian captain said. While Australia will be featuring in their second successive WTC final, South Africa made it to their first by topping the World Test Championship standings. Cummins showered praise on the Proteas, and believes the Temba Bavuma-led side has multiple match-winners in their midst to pose a challenge. "They always seem to compete in every tournament. They have got a lot of experience, especially the white-ball teams - they play across different franchise leagues. Rabada, Maharaj, Bavuma, they have played a lot of cricket over the years," said the Aussie skipper. "They have really good fast bowlers, they always seem to have not just one or two main guys but they have got four-six guys they can call," he said. "And yeah, some batters, you have not seen much (of them), but they have scored plenty of domestic runs. (We have) played most of the guys in the squad, certainly not everyone. There is always a little bit of mystique around South Africa, because we do not play them as often as, say India," he concluded
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Why neutrals should back South Africa against Australia in WTC final
On a recent episode of The Grade Cricketer podcast, the hosts, Sam Perry and Ian Higgins, tore lumps out of South Africa in a foul-mouthed tirade about the World Test Championship final against Australia. Perry predicted a finish 'inside three days' and Higgins, practically thumping the table, said: 'If I don't look at a scorecard and South Africa are three for spit my TV is going through the window.' Cue big alpha chuckles and main-character knee slaps. I know they were joking, skewering Australian arrogance as much as South African frailty, and that they have built a formidable brand that runs on side-mouthed jibes and hyperbolic bluster. Still, the lizard part of my brain lit up in protest. How dare they dismiss my countrymen? I wasn't alone in taking offence. Then my prefrontal cortex took the wheel and my anger turned to resignation before morphing into sadness. Not because they're probably right, and that anything other than an Australian romp would constitute an upset, but because of what a one-sided affair would say about the game. What we are looking at might one day be remembered as a high-water mark for global Test cricket. This could be the last chance a team other than Australia, India or England have a shot at claiming Test cricket's big prize. Notions of a competitive ecosystem are already threadbare. Captains representing one of the three wealthiest boards have lifted 71% of ICC titles since 2006. Another trophy for Pat Cummins would only emphasise this gulf. So we are all supporting South Africa next week, right? We should be. Even proud Australians who recognise there is more at stake here than bragging rights. Remember when Fanie de Villiers skittled Allan Border's boys to win a nail-biter in 1994? What about JP Duminy's 166 in Melbourne in 2008, a knock that convinced Ian Chappell to prematurely declare Duminy as 'the young batsman most likely to usurp [Ricky] Ponting's title' as 'master of the willow wielders'. Would you like to see visitors from West Indies, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka put up a fight on your own patch? If so, you'll swap gold for green and consider the implications if events at Lord's unfold as expected. As things stand, South Africa will not host any men's Tests next summer. The official line is that this barren spell – the first since the country was readmitted to international cricket in 1992 – will allow for stadium upgrades for the 2027 50-over men's World Cup and provide a rare stint at centre stage for the women's team. But it is hard not to interpret this as a harbinger of things to come. Sure, Australia (in September) and England (in December) visit for three Tests in 2026, but what happens then? If the Proteas, considerably outgunned compared with their richer rivals, get hammered in those marquee series and fail to take games beyond four days, how long until the beancounters at Cricket South Africa decide to focus instead on white-ball glory? And what of the players? They have held up their end of the deal, qualifying for the final. It is not their fault their board cannot organise more Tests. How long until Kagiso Rabada decides that third spells in the late afternoon dirt are not worth his time? There has already been a haemorrhaging of talent from the Test arena. It has been more than a decade since West Indies started battling to field their best players in whites. South Africa's fastest bowler, Anrich Nortje, opted out of a central contract to focus on white-ball cricket. So, too, has New Zealand's Kane Williamson, the winning captain of the first WTC in 2021. These aren't canaries in the coalmine. They're the equivalent of hornless white rhinos, stripped of what made them majestic, not by nature but by necessity. There is a cruel irony to South Africa clinging on to relevance in the shade of cricket's rulers. As Tim Wigmore chronicles in Test Cricket: A History, an epic telling of the 148-year story from its inception to Bazball, it was a South African who was the architect of the original big three. Abe Bailey, a mining magnate with close ties to Winston Churchill and Cecil Rhodes, helped establish the Imperial Cricket Conference in 1909. Almost six decades before the 'I' stood for 'International', cricket's first governing body was a flag bearer for the British empire. This meant teams such as the USA and Argentina, at the time more worthy of a seat at the top table than South Africa, were left to wither on the vine. The next WTC final is scheduled for 2027, the same year Test cricket turns 150. A century and a half of a game prized for its depth and difficulty, but who will be there to celebrate? This tournament, flawed and fiddly though it may be, has proved to be the last thread keeping teams such as South Africa tethered to relevance. Their victory at Lord's would be a victory for all cricket, a reminder that those on the periphery still matter. In an interview with Ali Martin this week, Sanjay Govil, the new co-owner of the Welsh Fire, made a prediction for the future of world cricket. 'Cricket might go the way of football in Europe, where they play for the clubs but then play for the country when required,' the Indian IT mogul said. 'There is still going to be Test cricket, but maybe – again, I'm just thinking through it – it is played just three months a year in two blocks of six weeks. Then X amount of time for the IPL, MLC, the Hundred etc. And not all players overlap. But I see the calendars evolving.' At first I was alarmed. A franchise owner proposing structural reform to Test cricket is enough to spike any purist's blood pressure. We have all seen how short-format cricket has cannibalised the game. South Africa sent a significantly weakened team to New Zealand last year as their best players were contractually bound to a domestic franchise competition. But what if he is right? Change is necessary and clearly something isn't working. Test matches are costly and unwieldy, and while mismanagement is a root cause, stubborn nostalgia will not save the format. Four-day Tests might be the solution, at least for the smaller teams who would then be able to play three-match series rather than unsatisfying two-Test shootouts. Plug those into Govil's two six-week windows and Sri Lanka, West Indies, Bangladesh and the rest of the game's second tier could end up playing 12 Tests in four series in the year. No team is scheduled to play more than 11 Tests in 2025. Sometimes you have to go backwards in order to go forward. Imagine getting us five-down and Will Jacks comes out to bat?' – Harry Brook appears more than satisfied with the strength of his batting lineup. No one needs to go too far down memory lane to recall World Test Championships of yore as the inaugural one was held as recently as 2019 but the proposal for such a tournament was first championed by the West Indies legend Sir Clive Lloyd in 1996. Lloyd was centrally involved in a universally acknowledged great inaugural final, also at Lord's, the first World Cup final in 1975. Now this is a match cricket fans go misty-eyed about and Tim de Lisle was our guide in 2019 when he wrote about his recollections as a 12-year-old at the time: 'The players were wearing whites, with no names or numbers on their backs. The bowling was opened, for Australia, by Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, a pair to strike fear into any opponent, yet no batsman felt the need for a helmet. Clive Lloyd of West Indies made a match-winning hundred wearing glasses. The past is another planet.' England managed to see off traffic and West Indies in the third ODI. Jonathan Liew hails the great Joe Root. And Gary Naylor examines the opening week of the Blast. … by writing to Daniel. To subscribe to The Spin, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
News18
8 hours ago
- General
- News18
Mitchell Marsh To Lead Australia In T20I Series Vs West Indies, Big Stars Rested
Last Updated: Mitchell Marsh will captain Australia in the Twenty20 series against West Indies while Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Travis Head have been rested from the 16-man squad. Mitchell Marsh will captain Australia upon his return to the Twenty20 squad announced on Wednesday for a five-match series in the West Indies. Explosive batsman Mitchell Owen has earned his first call-up. Fast bowler Josh Hazlewood is back after being rested for Australia's last T20 series against Pakistan in November. Left-arm spinner Matthew Kuhnemann joins the squad for the first time. Marsh, who missed the Pakistan series due to a lower back injury, has recovered and is ready to play after missing the Champions Trophy earlier this year. Australia's Test and 50-over captain Pat Cummins, along with Travis Head and Mitchell Starc, were excluded from the 16-man squad for the series next month. They will return to Australia following three Tests against the West Indies starting on June 25. Young batsman Jake Fraser-McGurk was dropped from the squad. However, 23-year-old Owen received his maiden call-up after an impressive Big Bash League season where he was the highest run-scorer and scored a memorable 108 off 42 balls in the final. Australia has won 12 of their past 14 matches as they build towards next year's T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka. Chairman of selectors George Bailey commented on the busy T20 schedule, which includes the series against the West Indies, followed by three matches against South Africa and New Zealand, and five matches against India at home. He emphasized the aim to refine and build a squad suited for the World Cup on the subcontinent. All-rounder Marsh was in excellent form during the Indian Premier League season, scoring 627 runs for Lucknow Super Giants, including a maiden century. Cameron Green and Cooper Connolly also return from injury. All-rounder Glenn Maxwell, who recently announced his retirement from 50-over international cricket, retained his place in the T20 squad. The first T20 against the West Indies is scheduled for July 20 in Kingston, Jamaica. Australia T20 squad: Mitchell Marsh (captain), Sean Abbott, Cooper Connolly, Tim David, Ben Dwarshuis, Nathan Ellis, Cameron Green, Aaron Hardie, Josh Hazlewood, Josh Inglis, Spencer Johnson, Matt Kuhnemann, Glenn Maxwell, Mitch Owen, Matthew Short, Adam Zampa. First Published:
The Hindu
11 hours ago
- Business
- The Hindu
Pat Cummins Interview: T20 cricket is at the mercy of form
Having redefined power hitting in T20 cricket last season and strengthening its batting unit in the auctions, Sunrisers Hyderabad went into the 2025 Indian Premier League campaign as one of the title favourites. It began the season by scoring the second-highest total ever (286 vs Rajasthan Royals) and closed it with the third biggest (278 vs Kolkata Knight Riders). Everything in between, however, was far from rosy. To state that SRH has disappointed this season would be an understatement, something that skipper Pat Cummins acknowledged. The pre-season talk of SRH breaching the 300-run mark only got louder when Ishan Kishan's debut century saw it take RR to the cleaners, a match that Cummins, in hindsight, believes only raised the bar even higher. In an exclusive chat with The Hindu , the Australian opened up about SRH faltering under the weight of expectations, weighed in on a possible squad rebuild, looked back on Australia's ODI World Cup success on Indian soil in 2023 and more. Excerpts. ALSO READ | Royal Challengers end long wait for maiden title Enough has been spoken about SRH's campaign. How have you, as an individual, processed it all game by game? What has the pressure been like on you and everyone in the team? The results haven't been probably as we hoped, but outside of that it's been great. Similar squad to last year, but some new faces, it's been great fun. I am really proud of how everyone enjoyed themselves and each other's company, and trained hard. It's been a good couple of months. I think that first game, getting 280-odd, obviously set the bar really high. That was as good a pitch as you're ever going to get. As a whole, it's about assessing what you think is a good score and each game that might change. I think, at times, we could have been a little bit better at that. You're the only overseas player to lead a side this season. Has that made any difference to the pressure on you in any way? I don't think so. Last year there were a few more overseas captains, but it's just the way it happens. I've really enjoyed it, working with Dan Vettori as the coach and some of the senior guys. I think having been captain last year helps this year because you've got a bit more experience. There were quite a few big tactical decisions taken during the season. Mohammad Shami being dropped (for the game against Delhi Capitals in Hyderabad) and you picking up the new ball was one of them. What prompted that move? It had been a difficult month or so for Shami, particularly on the pitch in Hyderabad which doesn't offer a lot for fast bowlers. We thought it was a good opportunity to get Eshan Malinga back in and Harshal [Patel] and [Jaydev] Unadkat bowled really well. It was just a bit of a change of make-up. ALSO READ | Analysis: The follies of a one-trick pony: Sunrisers Hyderabad and their freefall I play Test cricket and I'm used to bowling with a ball that might seam and swing a little bit. So, I just thought I'd have the first crack. Obviously it [the game against DC] was washed out, but I thought the fielding was the best we fielded and the energy was really good. It would have been nicer if the rain didn't come that day. Across teams, taking the pace off the ball has worked for the quicks this season. Test match lengths have brought out the best dividends from the surface. How have you personally tweaked your approach? I think in T20, the first two or three overs of a game are when you might be able to bowl a Test match at a line and length. The ball might seam or swing a little bit. But outside of that, it's time for your yorkers and your solid balls. That said, obviously the focus has been on that first ball, first over... to try and give it a chance to swing and seam. ALSO READ | Daily Quiz: On IPL finals and champions In that match against DC, you picked up a wicket with the first ball of your opening three overs. In hindsight, do you think SRH's fortunes would have been different had you made the change earlier in the season? No, you never know. I think I was as surprised as anyone [by how well my opening spell against Delhi Capitals was]. I'm normally terrible with my first ball, so that was good. I think the fifth over, it was a proper half volley and I got a wicket. Some days, it comes off and some days you bowl really well but you get hit for runs. That's T20 cricket. That night was my night. T20 cricket is at the mercy of form. Sometimes you do well, sometimes you don't. Did the packed schedule, with very little rest between matches, add to the SRH's troubles this season? I think it's good that you get an opportunity to play pretty quickly after a loss. We always talk about trying to put a loss aside but learn from it. I think (by) playing so many games within two months, you get to learn pretty quickly. We always concentrate on making sure we judge ourselves over a number of games. But once you have, try to learn those lessons. I think maybe we're a little bit slow to learn some of those lessons. How have the interactions between the younger players and experienced stars been this season? Anything or anyone you particularly took a shine to? A couple of the young guys you always chat to. Everyone's pretty relaxed. We've got loads of experience in our squad so the youngsters talk to different people. That's one of the joys of captaining someone like Zeeshan [Ansari] in his first big season, kind of working with him and talking about bowling. I love doing that. With the team not having the best of seasons, what do you do to relax when away from all the spotlight? Yeah, I mean, my family was with me in India for a couple of weeks. So I'd be in the pool every day with my kids, chasing them around. When we had a day off, we played a little bit of golf, went to a brewery during the night just for a couple of beers and dinner and so on. Normally we go and get a coffee with a couple of guys. Your family left India during the season and when you went to drop them at the airport, rumours began to circulate that you were leaving the team and going back home early. What was your reaction when you came across that 'news'? You do anything and someone's going to make a news story. I've been doing it for long enough that it doesn't really bother me. Honestly, it doesn't bother me really at all nowadays. You want to try and correct any incorrect things. But I honestly just do my own thing. What does the rebuild for SRH look like? If you don't have the season that you hoped for, I think your first response is 'we need to change a lot of things.' But if you look even across our games so far, we've kept a very similar batting line-up and even in the bowling department, there have been only one or two changes. That's because we're really happy with our squad. We think they are amazing, really high quality players who maybe haven't had their best season. So I don't think you'll see too many changes. I think the rebuild will be more about tweaking the way we play rather than actually changing the players. The World Test Championship (WTC) final is the big assignment after the IPL. How is the buzz about that on the Aussie WhatsApp chats? After IPL, our minds shift very quickly into Test matches. A lot of the guys are excited to go over to London for the WTC final. It's a place we play well at and also enjoy going to. So yeah, really excited to go over there and hopefully defend the title. I haven't seen many of the boys for a couple of months so we're all excited to get back together. After two finals against India (WTC and the ODI World Cup), you will now take on South Africa for the WTC crown. How are you feeling ahead of the clash? We've had a good run against India in finals over the last couple of years. South Africa, we haven't played a lot of over the years, so it's going to be a little bit different compared to, say, India, who we know really well. ALSO READ | McGrath's former trainer Chevell to work at MRF Pace Foundation Your quip about silencing Ahmedabad before the 2023 ODI World Cup final is something that stayed with the billions in this country after that game. Do you ever revisit that match and how you went about it? That [winning the World Cup] was a career highlight for me. I didn't always think I would be winning a World Cup with some of my best mates in the Aussie team. We played there [in Ahmedabad] with SRH and it was a packed stadium, it brought back memories. It [the World Cup final] felt like you had a team of 11 players going against a whole country. It was just such a wonderful World Cup campaign. But to culminate in that final… as I said, I'll remember that for a long time. That Australian team was quite experienced. We had high expectations of ourselves. It's those moments that you want to be involved in. You don't want to sit back and let someone else be the match winner. You want to go out and take it on. Whatever happens, happens. That was the mindset all the guys had on that day. You saw from literally the first instance how everyone was diving around in the field. You just put everything into a game like that. What was your favourite memory from the 2023 ODI World Cup, apart from winning it, of course? It has to be Glenn Maxwell at Wankhede scoring the double hundred [against Afghanistan]. I was down the other end and I think that summed up a lot of our World Cup campaign. Even when we didn't particularly play well, one guy had an amazing game and dragged us out and kind of won it for us. We had no reason to win that game. But Glenn Maxwell just basically played the best innings I think we'll ever see and got us home.
Straits Times
13 hours ago
- Business
- Straits Times
Ashes tickets sell at record rate
FILE PHOTO: Cricket - Ashes - Fifth Test - England v Australia - The Oval, London, Britain - July 31, 2023 Australia's Pat Cummins and teammates pose with the urn and trophies after drawing the series and retaining the Ashes Action Images via Reuters/Paul Childs/File Photo REUTERS SYDNEY - Tickets for the Ashes series were snapped up at a record rate when they went on sale on Tuesday with the allocations for the first three days of the Brisbane and Sydney tests as well as day one of the Melbourne test all exhausted. Cricket Australia said a total of 311,066 tickets were purchased on Tuesday for international matches in the home 2025-26 season, when the hosts will defend the urn against England in a five-test series. The previous record for a single day's sale was 111,741 tickets ahead of the 2017-18 Ashes series, CA said. "The record demand for tickets shows the excitement fans are feeling about the fantastic international season to come," said Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg. Australia won both the 2017-18 series and following home series in 2021–22 4-0 before drawing 2-2 in England in 2023 to retain the urn. England last triumphed in Australia in 2010-11, which is also the last time the tourists won a test Down Under. This year's series begins in Perth in late November before a day-night match in Brisbane, the third test in Adelaide and the traditional Melbourne and Sydney tests in December and January. More tranches of tickets will be made available for those fans who signed up for pre-allocation at a later date, while the general public will be able to make purchases from June 13. Australia also host both South Africa and India in Twenty20 and one-day series before the Ashes, while the women's team will play India in all three formats in February and March. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
