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Pat Cummins set for Adelaide return after missing Ashes pink-ball Test: ‘Barring any hiccups, I'll be ready to go'
Pat Cummins has registered 309 wickets in 71 Tests for Australia, and also has a career average of 21.19 with the ball at the Adelaide Oval.
Having missed the first and ongoing second Ashes Test, Pat Cummins is set to return for the Adelaide showdown between Australia and England. The Australian skipper has been recovering from a back injury and was very close to returning for the ongoing pink-ball Test in Brisbane before selectors and team management decided to delay his return. The pacer last played a Test match in July this year in the West Indies tour.
Speaking to Fox Sports, he said, "First of all, yeah, I should be right for Adelaide. So, I'll have one more bowl tomorrow (Sunday), and then we'll go to Adelaide and have another bowl there. So, barring any hiccups, I'll be good to go. Body feels great."
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On missing the ongoing pink-ball Test, he said that he was 'close' to returning in Brisbane. "Relatively close, really," he said.
"Body feels great, I'm bowling at 100 per cent. The big question mark when coming back from a bone injury is we tend to have a bowl and have a couple of days off, recover, bowl, bowl. I haven't done back-to-back bowls, so one of the high-risk things going into a Test match is you're going to be expected to bowl two days in a row, maybe three days in a row, and potentially quite a few overs," he continued.
Cummins has registered 309 wickets in 71 Tests for Australia, and also has a career average of 21.19 with the ball at the Adelaide Oval.
Cummins also remarked that his return in the second Test would not be fair to the other bowlers in his team, who had prepared to be part of the first half of the series.
He said, "So, we felt that was too risky; we started to kind of game plan. Could we try and maybe bowl 20 overs, 25 overs with ‘Greeny’ [Cameron Green] in the side as an all-rounder?"
"We feel like we’ve got lots of bowling. So, we really tried to map out a way where I could play, but it just felt a little bit too cute in the end. And it didn’t really feel fair on the other bowlers, or even on myself as a captain. If I had to have a bowler that I was bowling and trying to work out which overs, it didn’t quite feel right it didn’t feel like the right Test match to take that risk," he added.
