Australian captain Pat Cummins said he was thrilled with his team’s start in the current WTC cycle. After their decisive series victory against the West Indies in Grenada, Australia, who have advanced to the WTC Final finals the last two times, have already won their first two Test matches of this new cycle.
“Away win as well, not the easiest to come by so really pumped with how we bounced back after Lord’s (WTC Final),” Cummins said after the Grenada Test. “It’s been a good couple of weeks. Pink ball as well going into next week, it’s good to secure (the series) before that. They always seem to throw up something different. Dream start really, two from two, gets us into the cycle and yeah, played some really good cricket.”
Cummins also held back on praising his team’s more seasoned players, highlighting Steve Smith in particular for his crucial half-century that saved his team from disaster in the second innings when they were 28/3 and the lead was only 61. “I think (experience) is a big part of it, we spoke about someone like a Steve Smith coming back,” Cummins said. “Even if he didn’t play for Grenada, he has taken several wickets where you have to find another method to score. You have to scrape your way to a 50, and I believe that comes with experience, even if it doesn’t involve tremendous drives down the ground or anything else.
“With experience, you’ve seen a lot of the same problems before, you have a level of calmness that you can work your way through the problem. As a captain, it makes my life a lot easier knowing you’ve got lots of settled players there.”
The 32-year-old also threw his weight behind inexperienced opener Sam Konstas, who has only scored 33 runs in four innings thus far and has struggled to make an impression in the series. He remarked about Konstas, “Every innings feels like the biggest thing in the world,” However, I believe the statistics show that even the world’s top batters don’t hit their average three times out of four or whatever. It is more likely that you will fail than succeed.
“As long as you’re a quick learner, as long as you’re moving well and giving yourself the best chance, just keep doubling down on that and judge yourself after a series or so, not innings by innings.”
Kraigg Brathwaite, the former captain of the West Indies, has also been criticized as an opener in the series. Brathwaite’s 100th Test wasn’t particularly successful, despite the fact that his numbers have decreased recently. Now that he has scored 4, 4, 0, and 7, head coach Daren Sammy is considering his options for the upcoming match. “He hasn’t looked good this series, and in a team where you are searching for performances, you get very close to say ‘okay, do we give somebody else a chance?’” “Sammy said.” “But we will really have a good discussion, myself, the selection group, and the captain himself, about that particular situation.”
Sammy has acknowledged, nevertheless, that if Caribbean cricket pitches are to develop better hitters for Test matches, they must be changed. “It’s hard to produce the quality of batters that we want to compete,” he said. “It’s difficult to look at the surfaces we play on.
“If you look at all the averages, we barely have guys averaging 40-plus in (first-class) cricket. Those type of pitches, it doesn’t allow you to come up technically sound, because you’re really unsure. There’s always doubt. And in an ideal world, you want to see our guys perform because of, not in spite of. It’s something myself, the director of cricket, the franchise system, we’ve looked at very, very closely in trying to change that, trying to send the head groundsmen all over, trying to get the sort of wickets that allow batters to trust their techniques and stuff like that. And we also have some probably technical deficiencies that carry on from the Under-19, the youth level up to the national team.”
