Pat Cummins' great year
Australia's cricket captain and fast bowler, Pat Cummins, here bowling on the third Test's final day to Pakistan's Mohammed Rizwan, has laid to rest claims that fast bowlers are unsuitable captains for cricket teams.
Australia won the World Test Championship at the Oval in the final against India in June 2023, and then retained the Ashes against England.
In November, he led Australia to the Cricket World Cup one-day international trophy. They lost the first two games and then won nine straight, including the final.
For the upcoming IPL series in India, Sunrisers Hyderabad bid INR 20.5 crore ($3.67 million) for his services, the second-highest fee in the league's history.
Now he's capped it with a 3-0 win over Pakistan. His bowling hasn't suffered, he was player of the series and leading wickettaker with 19 wickets at an average of 12 and a strike rate of 28, an exceptional performance. His career stats of 258 wickets at an average of 22 and strike rate 46.2 are among the world's best.
Some musings about the one-day World Cup. Most of the talk about the final was about Cummins' decision after winning the toss to bowl first, well against the accepted 'bat first and get runs on the board' wisdom which had worked for teams during the tournament, particularly India which was undefeated until then.
Australian selector George Bailey's insight to Ravi Ashwin was that (paraphrasing) 'in the team's experience of short-form cricket in India the red soil disintegrates but the black soil gets better to bat on under lights...dew is not a big impact in red soil pitches whereas black soil pitches are good turners in the afternoon but in the night the pitch solidifies into a flat track and plays as though it’s made of concrete.'
This showed great understanding about how the wicket was going to play. The decision, backed up by aggressive, targeted bowling, enabled Australia to restrict India to a comparatively low total of 240 and then beat it, helped by a great innings of 137 from 120 balls by Travis Head (not to mention catching Rohit Sharma).
As an aside...the arrangements in India heavily favoured the local team, nothing to do with the players, umpires or pitches but rather the administration. While some aspects of the tournament administration were excellent, the late setting of the fixtures impacted fans. Crowds lift sides and make matches special. Overseas fans had visa delays and not knowing which venues would host the games meant that there were far fewer supporters than would have been expected...and this affected not just the overseas supporters...for example, the 47,000 opening game crowd at Ahmedabad's 132,000 seat Narendra Modi Stadium. Indians like watching Indian teams on TV but they also really enjoy competitive internationals, and were deprived of excitement by small crowds, particularly at the beginning.
Now to the excellent part...there were 48 games at 10 venues which now are among the world's largest, so there was a crowd record overall. The ICC claimed 1.25 million spectators and, on TV, 1 trillion total viewing minutes, which was up a third on 2011 when the World Cup was also hosted by India. International coverage grew with lots of viewers in Australia, the UK and Pakistan. The ICC also claimed 1.23 billion social media interactions. The final had 87.6 billion live viewing minutes globally, making it the most watched ICC match ever.
Pat Cummins' great year
Australia's cricket captain and fast bowler, Pat Cummins, here bowling on the third Test's final day to Pakistan's Mohammed Rizwan, has laid to rest claims that fast bowlers are unsuitable captains for cricket teams.
Australia won the World Test Championship at the Oval in the final against India in June 2023, and then retained the Ashes against England.
In November, he led Australia to the Cricket World Cup one-day international trophy. They lost the first two games and then won nine straight, including the final.
For the upcoming IPL series in India, Sunrisers Hyderabad bid INR 20.5 crore ($3.67 million) for his services, the second-highest fee in the league's history.
Now he's capped it with a 3-0 win over Pakistan. His bowling hasn't suffered, he was player of the series and leading wickettaker with 19 wickets at an average of 12 and a strike rate of 28, an exceptional performance. His career stats of 258 wickets at an average of 22 and strike rate 46.2 are among the world's best.
Some musings about the one-day World Cup. Most of the talk about the final was about Cummins' decision after winning the toss to bowl first, well against the accepted 'bat first and get runs on the board' wisdom which had worked for teams during the tournament, particularly India which was undefeated until then.
Australian selector George Bailey's insight to Ravi Ashwin was that (paraphrasing) 'in the team's experience of short-form cricket in India the red soil disintegrates but the black soil gets better to bat on under lights...dew is not a big impact in red soil pitches whereas black soil pitches are good turners in the afternoon but in the night the pitch solidifies into a flat track and plays as though it’s made of concrete.'
This showed great understanding about how the wicket was going to play. The decision, backed up by aggressive, targeted bowling, enabled Australia to restrict India to a comparatively low total of 240 and then beat it, helped by a great innings of 137 from 120 balls by Travis Head (not to mention catching Rohit Sharma).
As an aside...the arrangements in India heavily favoured the local team, nothing to do with the players, umpires or pitches but rather the administration. While some aspects of the tournament administration were excellent, the late setting of the fixtures impacted fans. Crowds lift sides and make matches special. Overseas fans had visa delays and not knowing which venues would host the games meant that there were far fewer supporters than would have been expected...and this affected not just the overseas supporters...for example, the 47,000 opening game crowd at Ahmedabad's 132,000 seat Narendra Modi Stadium. Indians like watching Indian teams on TV but they also really enjoy competitive internationals, and were deprived of excitement by small crowds, particularly at the beginning.
Now to the excellent part...there were 48 games at 10 venues which now are among the world's largest, so there was a crowd record overall. The ICC claimed 1.25 million spectators and, on TV, 1 trillion total viewing minutes, which was up a third on 2011 when the World Cup was also hosted by India. International coverage grew with lots of viewers in Australia, the UK and Pakistan. The ICC also claimed 1.23 billion social media interactions. The final had 87.6 billion live viewing minutes globally, making it the most watched ICC match ever.