Pat Cummins flies home due to “serious family illness”; set to return before 3rd Test
He is not expected to miss the Test, but in case of his absence, vice-captain Steve Smith will lead the side.
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Pat Cummins
Australia skipper Pat Cummins has flown home due to “serious family illness” after his team’s six wickets loss against India in the second Test in Delhi. But is set to return in time before the third Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, which is scheduled to start on March 1 in Indore.
He is not expected to miss the Test, but in case of his absence, vice-captain Steve Smith will lead the side, as he did in the Adelaide Test of the 2021-22 Ashes series. Cummins was forced to withdraw due to being a close Covid contact. Smith also captained the side during last year’s Day-Night Test in Adelaide after Cummins sustained a quad injury.
Cummins was the sole pacer in the Delhi Test. Knowing the spin-friendly tracks in India, Australia chose to play three spinners but did not get the desired result in front of the Indian spin duo of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja.
The 29-year-old Cummins’ bowling wasn’t impactful on the turning pitches at all. All he could scalp was a combined three wickets in both Tests. But apart from his bowling, the Aussie batters produced a lackluster show. They faced a collapse in both the Tests.
Pat Cummins observes that Aussie batters went out of their methods
After the conclusion of the second Test, Pat Cummins was left disappointed to see that the Dehli Test faced the same result like that of the Nagpur one. Despite a good start from them in the first innings and getting a little bit of the upper hand with the ball during India’s first innings, the Baggy Greens’ plans were spoiled by the Indian spinners on Day 3.
“I thought they (India) bowled really well. It’s not easy out there, but perhaps some guys went away from their methods,” Cummins said after the match. He acknowledged that the ‘”one size fits all” won’t suit while batting on these pitches.
“Each batter has their own way to go about it. I don’t think there’s any one size fits all rule. Unfortunately, quite a few of us got out with kind of cross battled shots which might not be our preferred method,” Cummins explained further.
On Sunday, the visitors lost nine wickets in about 90 minutes in the morning, similar to that of the Nagpur Test where Cummins’ side saw a demoralizing collapse. “It’s disappointing, this game was similar to Nagpur’s second innings,” Cummins added.
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