World Cup Final: Blue-eyed boy with belligerence in his soul

Ahmedabad: It’s easy to forget how gritty and effective Pat Cummins is when you’re looking at him. Actually, it’s called inadvertently staring because the man is straight out of a Marlboro advertisement from the 80s. Boy, those eyes are something to behold. 

Right, fawning aside, the point is that he wouldn’t feature on the long list of great captains Australia has had historically, but maybe, just maybe, there should be a petition to get him on there. 

Australia won the 2021 T20 World Cup. They retained the Ashes in Australia that same year. They won the World Test Championship by defeating India in the final at the Oval earlier this year, and they weren’t too far off winning the series against India in India. 

Besides, the T20 World Cup, which they won almost begrudgingly under Aaron Finch, the rest of these victories and near-victories came under Cummins’ leadership. 

Oh, and there was drama involving Cummins and Justin Langer, with the former coach insisting that a coup was staged to orchestrate his exit. 

Cummins, obviously, said that wasn’t the case, and it probably wasn’t, but it was a tiring few days of the did-they-didn’t-they conveyor belt of rumours. 

If that wasn’t emotionally draining enough, Cummins flew back mid-way through the series against India to be by his ailing mother, only to see her pass away a week or so later.

Under these tragic circumstances, Cummins had to get his troops in line for the World Cup. That wasn’t an easy task because a number of their players were injured and resultantly they lost three games against South Africa and two games against India in a back-to-back series. 

This was supposed to be their preparatory phase. Frankly, it couldn’t have gone worse. Turns out, it could.

Travis Head’s hand was broken. Ashton Agar was ruled out, making way for Marnus Labuschagne. Glenn Maxwell was iffy, Mitchell Starc had some niggles, Steven Smith was ailing, Marcus Stoinis had a hamstring issue, Adam Zampa was ill; Cameron Green and Alex Carey were desperately out of form. 

By the way, Cummins has captained Australia in only two ODIs heading into the World Cup. How then did this 30-year-old from Westmead do what he did? What is that you ask?

He and his team lost the first two games of the World Cup before winning the next nine games in succession to win the whole thing for the sixth time. 

This was not about talent, this was about a little bit of luck and a whole lot of grit, and Cummins is where that begins.

On Sunday against India, he won the toss and opted to bat (due to dew, obviously) but earned the ire of those on the outside for the decision.

He brought Maxwell on in the eighth over to see if Rohit Sharma would bite the bait, and the Indian opener did in the 10th over. But, the true impact of Cummins was felt in his primary role - as a bowler. 

After getting Shreyas Iyer to nick one straight down Josh Inglis’ gullet behind the stumps in the 11th over, he took himself off after a couple of more overs and waited for the right moment to bring himself on. 

That moment came in the 29th over, and from around the wicket. Then, for some inexplicable reason, he switched to over the wicket. At this point, Virat Kohli was on 53 and India were rebuilding at 148/3. 

Kohli looked solid. Cummins needed luck. The latter succeeded as Kohli looked to dab one to third man as he had all innings long, only this time, the ball took the inside edge and clattered into the stumps. 

The crowd, nearly every single one of the 100,000-plus, had their hands on their heads, if not their mouths agape. The stadium had become pantomime even as Cummins let out a roar. 

He had taken down the King. The Kingdom remained. But that Travis Head-shaped trump card was going to bring it all down with that sizzling blade. 

“There’s nothing more satisfying than hearing a big crowd go silent,” Cummins has said on the eve of the game. 

Turns out, he is a soothsayer too.