Perhaps the most endearing moment of Amazon documentary series The Test was Pat Cummins’ valiant attempt at playing Call of Duty with his teammates in a Pakistan hotel room.
The Australian Test captain, donning a thick set of headphones, looked completely out of his depth as he attempted to navigate the video game’s map.
“I’ve got no idea where I’m meant to be going,” he muttered, eyes darting across the screen.
“Oh no, I can hear footsteps. I can hear footsteps, it’s very scary.”
Australian all-rounder Mitchell Marsh, the team’s self-proclaimed Call of Duty champion, offered a blunt assessment of his skipper’s efforts.
“He’s absolutely useless,” Marsh laughed. “He’s s***.
“We’ve actually found the one thing he’s not good at, and that’s Call of Duty.”
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Cummins, a verified bookworm who prefers solving crosswords over playing PlayStation, hasn’t picked up a controller in six months.
“I haven’t turned on my PlayStation since the Sri Lanka tour,” he told foxsports.com.au via Zoom from his Bengaluru hotel room last week.
“After this call I might jump on.”
Aside from his Call of Duty exploits, Cummins has hardly put a foot wrong since accepting the Test captaincy in December 2021. Australia is yet to lose a Test series under his guidance, losing just one of their 15 most recent matches.
Bowling captains are a rarity in the five-day format — Cummins was the first pace bowler to captain Australia’s Test side since 1956, when Ray Lindwall occupied the role for one match against India.
Subsequently, Cummins’ appointment was met with some hesitancy — pundits questioned whether the added burden would impact his on-field performance. Even the legendary Allan Border was unconvinced.
Yet Cummins has averaged 20.12 with the ball as captain, compared to 21.59 when not in charge, maintaining his ICC No. 1 ranked Test bowler status for nearly four years. His fellow quicks repeatedly express how refreshing it’s been to have a bowling captain at the helm.
Cummins accepted the captaincy with a dose of scepticism, knowing the role comes under heavy scrutiny whenever the team’s performance begins to fade.
“I’ve got enough going on,” he said on The Test. “I love just going out and bowling.”
His previous captaincy experience was negligible; apart from a handful of Marsh Cup matches with the New South Wales Blues in early 2021, he had not led a cricket team since high school.
“I’ve never captained spinners before,” he laughed ahead of last summer’s Brisbane Ashes Test. “Lyon’s played 100 Tests. If he can’t sort it out, no one can.”
Cummins’ partnership with Australian coach Andrew McDonald will be crucial over the next nine months, which is headlined by the upcoming Test tour of India, a World Test Championship Final, an away Ashes series and a World Cup campaign.
The duo has been credited for establishing a relaxed atmosphere within the squad; Usman Khawaja described the current team environment as the best he’s ever been a part of, applauding the decision to abandon organised warm-ups.
“I haven’t done a warm-up in about seven Test matches, it’s unbelievable,” Khawaja told reporters during the recent New Year’s Test against South Africa.
“Nothing hurts you more than a warm-up, I tell you what. I think it’s added two years to my career, 100 per cent.
“We get to go out and do individual warm-ups, do what we need to. It’s just those small things that think has really helped the environment of the Australian cricket team.
“I used to find it really intense, and it used to take a lot of mental energy out.
“It’s been really refreshing.”
McDonald entrusts the team’s experienced players to prepare themselves for Test cricket however they deem appropriate, providing resources and advice upon request, but rarely making demands.
“If you want to hit a lot of balls, you’ve got that opportunity. If you don’t, that’s fine,” Marnus Labuschagne told foxsports.com.au last month.
“Prepare the way you want, and you’re responsible for your own performance. Every player wants to be in charge of their own performance, and if you have that, even if you fail, at least you can say, well I did it my way, and I achieved what I did doing it the way I wanted to.”
Veteran opener David Warner, who cited fatigue following his recent Big Bash League cameo, didn’t take part in two days of Australia’s recent training camp in Bengaluru ahead of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, opting instead to recuperate in the team hotel.
Speaking to reporters on Saturday, McDonald acknowledged the 36-year-old’s recent workload has been “demanding”, promising that Warner will be “recharged and ready to go” for the first Test in Nagpur. He’s cautious of player fatigue, which is partly why Australia didn’t request a warm-up match ahead of the gruelling Test series.
Cummins believes that McDonald’s sympathetic approach to coaching is one of his defining qualities, and the playing group has resonated with his laid-back demeanour.
“He just loves the art of coaching,” Cummins told foxsports.com.au. “He’s tactically very sound, technically very sound. Really gets bowling, really gets batting, so he’s really good to talk to about cricket.
“The other facet of leadership that he’s great at is that people side of things, especially in this role where you spend so much time away from families, you’re on the road.
“Sometimes reading the person and knowing what they need is even more valuable than really good coaching.
“He can kind of mix and match and suits everyone’s personalities and get the best out of each individual really well.”
Meanwhile, Cummins is intent on reducing stress whenever possible, wanting to ensure his teammates are relishing the opportunity to represent their country, rather than dreading the inevitable challenges.
“Off the field is as important as on the field,” Cummins said.
“Whether it’s just sitting down and having a coffee or playing Call of Duty together, playing a bit of golf or going out for dinner; all those simple things that make a big difference.
“Whatever’s thrown at us, whether it goes our way or it doesn’t, the one thing that we can control is how we enjoy the tour and respond to it and hopefully keep that relaxed environment.”
He’s also reluctant to instruct, encouraging his teammates to embrace their natural game and feel comfortable playing their unique brand of cricket. His message is clear — ignore the critics and trust your own method.
“The team runs itself, and Pat does a really good job of letting everyone do their own thing,” Labuschagne explained. “Making sure we can play the way we want to play, tell the story the way we want to tell the story.”
Supported by a wider leadership network within the squad, Cummins repeatedly downplays his own influence on the team, acknowledging the team’s wealth of experience makes his job considerably easier.
“The team’s really humming along at the moment, the players are absolute pros,” Cummins said.
“Sometimes I feel like I can step back and it just kind of runs itself, and I don’t feel like I need to intervene or be an enforcer when things are going well, like they have been.”
With the exception of last year’s 15-day grind in Pakistan, Cummins and McDonald have enjoyed a relatively tame introduction to their respective stints as captain and coach, but that all changes on Thursday when the first Test against India gets underway in Nagpur.
Former Australian coach Justin Langer described the India Test tour as his “Mount Everest”, and for good reason. India has not lost a home Test series in more than a decade — of their most recent 43 home Tests, they’ve lost two.
Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke, Steve Smith and Tim Paine never won a Test series in England or India as captain. If Cummins and McDonald return home in August with the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and Ashes urn in their possession, they’d be considered among Australia’s most successful sporting leadership duos of the modern era.
“This is the ultimate test,” Border, who led Australia during an undefeated Test tour of India in 1986, told foxsports.com.
“Obviously the Ashes is the one we want to win, but our guys are suited to playing there (in England). The final frontier really is India, where we haven’t had that enormous success that we sort of expect.
“My advice (to Cummins) would be keep playing positive, attacking cricket … back your ability, don’t second-guess yourself. Back your instincts.”