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Follow UsDon’t you lie down at night, thinking it would be awesome to go back in time and change things from the past?
At some point over the last three years, Pat Cummins and the entire Australian bowling unit would have thought about that. They would have gone to bed thinking, if only……life gave us another chance.
Incidentally, life gave them a second chance in the 2022 Ashes against England. They were so close yet so far, with England walking away with the narrowest of escapes, invoking the demon of Sydney on them.
Not once, but twice. Life providing a third chance? Such stuff only happens in fairytales.
Luckily, Cummins and the entire Australian outfit are in a fairytale; they got a third chance in almost identical fashion. With the series tied at 1-1 and the Gabba Test ending in a pale draw, they had to ensure they walked away from the Boxing Day Test with an important win wrapped in a pretty present.
It wasn’t just a win; it was the only thing to bury the ghosts of one of Australia’s darkest home losses against India in 2021. After all, this was an Australian team that hadn’t won a single Border-Gavaskar Trophy in over a decade.
Cummins’ legacy hinged on the five-match series, like the World Test Championship (WTC) final. Now that you have the entire history in front of you, put yourself in the shoes of the Australian skipper.
You think that the wicket is going to get tougher for the batter. But somehow, India have not just recovered from 33/3 but went an entire session without losing a wicket. Suddenly, you could see the shoulders slowly dropping, almost like Cummins and Co started accepting the fate of such things happening in cricket.
You almost surrender and surround yourself with negative thoughts, “Why does my life go this way?”. Why can’t I, for once, find a way to win against India? Those thoughts might have crossed Cummins’ paths, but that’s when the Australian skipper played the man, not the odds, unlike his predecessor.
Rishabh Pant at the crease.
He’s perhaps the most dangerous batter in world cricket, let alone Tests. None of your front-line bowlers have managed to do anything apart from beating his defence. You also have to keep an eye on the overrate but, at the same time, still, find ways to win the match while ensuring that India don’t get too ahead of the run chase as well.
Such complications can usually put you under immense pressure, but Cummins has ice on his wrist, throwing the ball to Travis Head to kill both the birds: a) overrate and b) Pant. Maybe you can’t completely give the Australian skipper points for the dismissal, but you can’t take it away from him.
It was a bait with some merit to it.
That’s been one of the defining features of Cummins’ captaincy tenure - instinctive calls driven on the go. When nothing happened in the wicket, and you couldn’t quite tire out your frontline bowlers, Cummins plotted the downfall like Chanakya.
Even then, India still had Ravindra Jadeja, Nitish Kumar Reddy, and Yashasvi Jaiswal. Australia knew how underestimating a batting pair could come back to bite the backside. Under Paine, they were a bit timid, but they learnt a lesson under Cummins and managed to execute their plans to the T.
Cummins got on Scott Boland, and it took the 35-year-old just a few balls before sending Jadeja packing. Getting Nathan Lyon on from the other end was equally impressive against Nitish, the batter who had smashed the off-spinner in the first innings of the MCG Test.
But it was that bait yet again. While Nitish didn’t go for a big hit, he was undone by Lyon at the slip, opening a floodgate for collapse. Just a few overs ago, India were driving fiercely en route to a draw at MCG in front of almost 75,000, but out of nowhere, almost in thin air, they found themselves in a position to kill India’s hopes.
The architect behind it: skipper Cummins.
So, it was only fitting that the 31-year-old picked up India’s prized scalp - Yashasvi Jaiswal, bending his back and beating the left-hander with a brute of a bouncer. There’s no way any Indian player could have walked out of the MCG saying they were ‘unlucky’ to lose the Test.
"When you take all that into account, I think that was the best Test match I've been involved in, in terms of 80-odd thousand on the first three days and (74,000) today, it was huge," Cummins said in the post-match press conference.
"It felt like it swung a lot as well, it never felt like we were so far ahead of the game that a win looked certain.
"Overall, just one of those great wins.”
Over the last two years, Cummins has already elevated his legacy to be on the same pedestal as Ricky Ponting, especially with how he changed the discourse of Australian cricket. From the days of being abused at the boundary ropes in England with sandpaper in the hands, Australia went on to reinvigorate itself as an unstoppable force in world cricket.
The fact that 373,691 people could witness such an orchestral rendition over five days establishes Cummins’ place in the pantheon of greatness. Be it Edgbaston 2023, Kolkata 2023, Ahmedabad 2023 or Melbourne 2024, name it, and Pat Cummins played an integral part in Australia, sealing memorable moments and Test wins.
"I reckon that's (MCG win) right at the top – Edgbaston was pretty special, and I reckon that's pretty much on par,” Cummins said.
Life gave Cummins and Co a third chance, and they took it with both hands to bury the ghosts of Sydney here at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia’s home of cricket.
