Jarrod Kimber, CS Chiwanza
Pat Cummins stood at the top of his mark. He was about to deliver the fifth ball of the 16th over. Rajasthan Royals needed 45 runs and had Riyan Parag and Shimron Hetmyer, two batters who catch fire quickly, at the crease. The duo is not eating out on past exploits, they are part of the reason the Royals have been outstanding at the death. They have the highest average (32.13) and are one of only three teams striking at 190 or more from the 16th to the 20th over (190.51).
ESPNCricinfo’s predictor gave the Royals a win probability of 83% in that May 2 game when the Sunrisers Hyderabad captain brought himself back into the attack. He conceded two runs in the first four deliveries and needed to prevent a boundary off the last two balls to keep his side in it. However, Cummins did more than that. His fifth delivery was just full enough to prevent Parag from getting under it completely. The 22-year-old tried to launch him over long-on but only managed to send it to Marco Jansen stationed close to the fence. Suddenly, SRH weren’t just in the game, they had a legitimate shot at victory. Cummins had turned things around for his side.
This is something he has been doing since he was nine, turning out for Glenbrook-Blaxland Cricket Club’s U10 team. If you comb through their records, you will find a report from his coach which describes Cummins as a tearaway fast bowler, who worried their wicketkeeper as much as the opposition batsmen. It also mentions the nine-year-old’s “swashbuckling batting” and how he took the most catches in the season and scored more runs than anyone else.
When he was four, Cummins arrived home from preschool with an armful of sweets. He ran from room to room excitedly sharing his haul with his brothers and sisters. Laura, his younger sister, was in the bathroom and was not impressed by her brother’s intrusion. She slammed the door in his face, but unfortunately, he had his hand on the door and it closed on the hand, slicing off the end of his right middle finger.
The middle finger is important for a bowler, but Cummins did not let the severed digit affect his delivery. He learned to work around it. For most right-handers, the middle finger is the last to come off the ball. For Cummins, it is the forefinger, making him a natural inswinger of the ball, whereas most are outswingers. But, besides that, the chopped finger did not affect his bowling.
At 11, he bowled with so much heat his peers did not like facing him. One youngster retired whenever his team played against Glenbrook-Blaxland because Cummins’ deliveries were hitting him on the body. The boy’s mother pleaded with the pacer to not hit her son. Two years later, Cummins made his debut for the Glenbrook-Blaxland senior team. The men’s side was a player short and co-opted the teenager into the team. He turned the role of an extra into a starring one, bagging a five-wicket haul to set his team on the path to victory.
When he wasn’t wowing teammates and opposition players with his swing and control, Cummins sharpened his skill competing against his older brothers under difficult conditions. The Australian is the youngest of three boys. Competing against Matt and Tim wasn’t just tough because they were older, stronger and better skilled, but also because the boys drowned the backyard in water. That created seriously slippery and challenging conditions.
It prepared him for adversity. IPL 2024 is unlike all seasons before it. Surfaces are graveyards for bowlers. It is the Wild West. Bat-wielding desperados are running amok, scything bowlers and no longer merely aspiring, but actively seeking to break the 300-run barrier. Pacers and spinners are labouring at the pleasure of batters. Teams have reached and passed the 200-run mark 32 times, and eight of those totals are of 250 or more.
It is in the midst of this chaos that Cummins is having his best IPL season with the ball. At a glance, 2017 was his most outstanding year. He bowled 46.1 overs for Delhi, taking 15 wickets at an economy of 8.1, and an average of 24.9. This time around, as of May 5 he has sent down 40 overs for 12 wickets at 9.05 for an average of 30.2.
When you scratch beneath the surface, you see that his current numbers are better than 2017. Seven years ago, Cummins conceded 373 runs in 12 innings. This was 26 runs less than expected, and his economy was 0.58 points better than the average bowler would have if they bowled the same overs. This year, he has conceded 362 runs, which is 35 runs less than expected and his economy is 0.9 points better.
Measuring against the prevailing run-scoring standards puts Cummins’ remarkable 2024 into context. The mean score in 2017 was 159, compared to 2024’s 183, and teams are also scoring much faster, at 9.6 runs per over, in contrast to 8.4 seven years ago.
After 2017, Cummins had three middling seasons with Kolkata Knight Riders: 2020, 2021, and 2022. His true stats for that period were below par, so much so that when SRH emptied their bank account to get him, and then appointed him as captain, the IPL universe had a reaction akin to a bit of a snicker. Many who had followed the franchise closely chalked it up to their management behaving as expected, making inefficient auction purchases and impatient decisions. After all, this is the team that has had four different coaches and an equal number of captains in as many years.
This time though, they seem to have panned and struck gold. It’s as if when Cummins took the break from the league in 2023, the 30-year-old went off to a distant wood where he found the elixir to T20 bowling. When they played against Royals, the pacer conceded a miserly 10 runs at the death. Three in the 16th and seven in the 19th, and bagged a brace of wickets against a team that’s obliterating bowlers in the last five overs.
Cummins, the skinny, rangy kid who cut his teeth at Glenbrook-Blaxland Cricket Club and mastered control over the cricket ball in his family home’s slippery muddy backyard, has finally found his feet in the IPL in Hyderabad, after a couple of stops with the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Delhi Daredevils – as the Capitals were named then. He is not just leading the bowling attack, Cummins is captaining the Sunrisers in the same genial manner he employed as he rose through the ranks.
All stats updated till the LSG v KKR game on May 5, 2024.
