Cummins promises a 'colourful' future

Second semi-final of ICC World T20 – Gayle & Samuels are trying to set up a big total. The score reads 53 for 1 after 7 overs. Bailey hands over the ball to Pat Cummins to bowl the 8th over. First ball – full and boom! In the arc for Samuels who smacks it to the advertisement boards behind the extra cover fielder for a four. With a couple of sixes preceding this over, Samuels is in the mood to butcher anything in his arc. Second delivery – takes almost a decade to reach the other end, Samuels goes for the big slog, misses and timber! A moment of sudden stoppage for a vehicle travelling on an expressway! The remaining 4 deliveries are alternately full, quick and genuine slow deliveries short of length; just six runs off that over. Zoom out; in the context of the 205 for 4 total that West Indies amassed, that over didn’t count for much.

16th over of the game against India – Cummins has Dhoni and Raina to contain. Australia hasn’t let India gain any momentum until then. Cummins sends in a short of length delivery to Raina for a single first up, quick length dot delivery next, and follows it up with the risky slow bouncer which is cut in the deep for just two. Two quick deliveries in good areas imply two dot balls. Just 3 runs off 5 deliveries in the 16th over! The last delivery could have been a replica of previous ones, but is instead a wide, sucker ball to draw Dhoni to play the false shot and he holes out to Bailey at extra cover. The momentum remains with Australia and the over delivers a bonus with Dhoni’s wicket. At the end of the day, that over doesn’t stand out much as Australia eases to a 9-wicket win.

There are two ways to judge young, budding players – one is to scan and analyse match score sheets or observe how they respond to questions that situations in the middle ask! The above two isolated incidents speak a few things about Patrick Cummins’ qualities as a pace bowler. He is genuinely quick, period. But a couple of moments in this tournament reflect why his peers and colleagues rate him so high. Samuels’ dismissal and the over at death against India suggest that he can devise a real-time plan and execute it efficiently. Australian bowling attacks in the past were impeccable for they didn’t allow you to get away once they had the batsmen under control; Cummins appears in shades of that culture.

Genuine pace bowlers have a few common attributes – they are aggressive, don’t let batsmen settle, love to ruffle a batsman’s feathers, believe that a boundary ball should be followed by a quicker delivery! We have seen Cummins’ burst in Test and ODI cricket, but for many this was the first instance of watching this much hyped talent in T20 cricket. He can be relentless and paceman-like in the longer formats, but for the shortest format he appears to be in the Brett Lee mould – using variations of length and pace, rather than of the Shane Tait one – eternal pace, you-miss-I-hit.

Call it pre-match planning or resistant leadership, but Cummins, for the major part of the competition, wasn’t allowed to bowl two consecutive overs! 6 wickets in 6 innings at 8.20 runs per over aren’t numbers or performances that make it to highlights packages or dream teams of the tournament, but in the overall setup of the Australian attack, Cummins had an effective role. His stats are a reflection of the period in the innings he came in to bowl – first or second change bowler most often, bowling an over within the power-play and one just after it; his last two were kept for the death.

We don’t know what the team management has plans for Cummins and despite his okay-ish show in Sri Lanka, there would be many who would not want to see him burdened with limited-overs assignment. He has the test-cricket look in him, and the smartness for one-over spells. Couple an injury-prone body to that and it would be a better proposition for him to stick to one, or at most two formats for effective usage of his skills and ability in the long term; plausibly test and T20 cricket. Cummins hasn’t emerged as the find or the star of the tournament, but his 24 overs promise a bright prospect!