Cummins eager for special Pakistan Test

Steve Larkin | March 4, 2022

Pat Cummins reckons this is more than just a game of Test cricket.

Cummins and his teammates will be escorted amid heavy security to Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium on Friday for Australia’s first Test in Pakistan for 24 years.

“This will be a tour that at the end of our career we will look back on and think ‘geez, that was really special’,” Cummins said.

“Just as much as anything, the way we have been looked after with the security presence – we will probably never experience anything like that in our life.

“So just great life experience, really proud and happy to be experiencing Test cricket over here in Pakistan.

“Hopefully there’s plenty more of it in the future.

“Basically the whole previous generation of Australian teams didn’t get to experience Pakistan so we feel really lucky and fortunate that we’re the first team to back here.”

The opening of the three-Test series will be Australia’s first away Test since the 2019 Ashes, with Cummins and his colleagues spending much of that period in COVID cocoons.

Now, they’re in a strict security net with players and staffers only travelling from their team hotel to the ground and back again.

“We are either at the ground or at the hotel but that is not abnormal on some tours, especially in COVID times,” Cummins said.

“Transport to and from the ground looks a little bit different.

“But overall it doesn’t feel too different. We’re really enjoying our set-up here in the hotel and just more than anything else just excited to play cricket.

“That has been the focus and there has been nothing that has taken us away from that.”

Rain washed out Thursday’s scheduled match-eve training sessions for both sides, who had trained at the venue simultaneously on preceding days.

“It’s a bit different,” Cummins said of the concurrent training sessions of the nations.

“Of course you naturally look across as much as anything else to see the way they go about their training.

“It has has been good to get a bit of an eye on them, put a face to the name for some of them.

“But it hasn’t really changed the way we have trained at all.

“It’s one of things you can kind of get caught up in it but really, once the toss goes up and the game starts, it doesn’t really make too much of a difference.”

Cummins will announce his team at the toss, with selection discussions centred on whether to play two specialist spin bowlers and two pacemen, or stick with Australia’s customary bowling line-up of frontline spinner Nathan Lyon plus three quicks.