Australia v England | Third Ashes Test | Day Two
Pat Cummins zips one past Zak Crawley and there’s hardly a murmur. No, the heat has not yet sizzled the Adelaide Oval crowd; until Cummins reaches his arms out wide and carries on his follow-through all the way to Alex Carey, it is not clear that Australia’s skipper has, in fact, just dismissed Crawley.
The wider angle, the extra bounce, the sliver of nip away, a shave of the right-hander’s outside edge. Pat Cummins, who has not bowled a ball in a game for 158 days, is back with the type of perfect dismissal only Pat Cummins could pull off.
Before the hottest part of a wickedly warm day two hit, Cummins had also dismissed Joe Root in similar fashion. By stumps, England’s last-gasp attempt to get back into this Ashes series looks to have evaporated.
Ben Stokes’ group’s pre-tour preparation consisted of one non first-class intra-squad game at a club ground on the outskirts of Perth. On Thursday, they were done over by a bowling attack led by a man who had not played any cricket in nearly half a year.
Going off the results of his first day back in the office at least, Cummins’ fast-tracked and carefully-managed recovery from a bone stress injury looks to have been timed to precision. The Australians have long insisted the 32-year-old is a different breed, and he has done little here to disprove the notion. Even if these were the most brutal circumstances he could have returned in.
“I daresay it’s been probably a little bit of a shock to Pat’s system, just with the hard conditions,” Nathan Lyon said of Cummins’ comeback that yielded figures of 3-54 from 14 overs as on-ground temperatures approached 50 degrees Celsius according to the Aussies.
“But each player is different. Pat has trained extremely hard to get to the position that he’s at now. I know for me, I like bowling a lot of overs before a Test series.
“But Pat’s that world-class. You’ve seen today that he could have an extensive break off, train his backside off, but then come and be extremely effective and be a world-class bowler.”
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Cummins has looked in tip-top shape leading into this match.
In Perth, the right-armer’s teammates did their best to avoid the net he bowled in as he hit full pace while the series commenced without him. So well were they then coming out of his hand in Brisbane that selectors seriously toyed with the idea of bringing him back ahead of schedule on an overs restriction as part of a four-seamer attack.
Still, there is a difference between bowling in practice and bowling in the intensity of an Ashes Test. And, to nit-pick a Test career that has delivered 312 victims at 22.06 apiece, there have been some rusty Cummins returns in the past.
Last summer, his struggle for rhythm in the first Test against India in Perth was emblematic of his team’s sluggish start to a series he later dominated. Against the same opposition in 2023, he sent down 10 no-balls in the World Test Championship final. On both occasions, he was coming back with little cricket under his belt.
“I had no doubt,” Lyon said of Cummins’ comeback this summer. “When I saw Pat working his backside off at Cricket Central (in Sydney) a good distance from his home, the amount of efforts that he’s been putting in on rehab, recovery, then the overs, the training in the gym.
“Extremely proud of the way he’s gone about it. That’s why he’s a pretty inspirational leader.
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“That was extremely hot out there – it was hard, I’m extremely proud of especially the quick bowlers, the efforts that they put in.
“The consistency – they put the ball in the right areas for long periods of time. Got some reward for some hard work and some hard conditions.”
All this after what Cummins concedes has been a necessarily rushed return from the same kind of injury that derailed the early stages of his blossoming international career.
He first felt a twinge in the Caribbean in July, a blow that was overshadowed by Mitchell Starc decimating West Indies in the final Test of that series, skittling the hosts for just 29. The Windies’ second innings was over so fast – fewer than 15 overs – that the sore Cummins did not need to bowl himself.
It was not necessarily unusual to see a flare-up on the medical scan he underwent in Jamaica. Few fast bowlers go through an X-ray machine and not light up the print-out like a Christmas tree. But medicos knew something serious was afoot when a follow-up scan back home a month later showed their prized quick’s back had not fully healed.
Four months off bowling had by then put Cummins’ involvement in the Ashes in serious doubt. “If there was a flare-up or a setback, I wouldn’t have played,” he told reporters this week. “We wouldn’t have risked it.”
Typically only time can heal the kind of wound Cummins was dealing with. Australia did not have enough of it. To play against England, his recovery had to be expedited.
“You normally try to ramp up over … three or four months. But obviously that would have meant that we missed the Ashes,” he said. “So we set an aggressive plan to get up in six or seven weeks.”
Australia’s ambitious comeback plan has so far paid off. How he pulls up from his return efforts on day three, with England still holding two wickets in the bank in their first innings, as well as in the visitors’ second dig will be telling.
The prize could be him celebrating Australia again winning the Ashes, with two Tests still to play, in front of the Member’s Stand later this week.
2025-26 NRMA Insurance Men’s Ashes
First Test: Australia won by eight wickets
Second Test: Australia won by eight wickets
Third Test: December 17-21: Adelaide Oval, 10:30am AEDT
Fourth Test: December 26-30: MCG, Melbourne, 10:30am AEDT
Fifth Test: January 4-8: SCG, Sydney, 10:30am AEDT
Australia squad (third Test only): Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Brendan Doggett, Cameron Green, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Michael Neser, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Jake Weatherald, Beau Webster
England squad: Ben Stokes (c), Harry Brook (vc), Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson, Shoaib Bashir, Jacob Bethell, Brydon Carse, Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Matthew Fisher, Will Jacks, Ollie Pope, Matthew Potts, Joe Root, Jamie Smith (wk), Josh Tongue
