With a ticking mind and change in pace, Pat Cummins delivers at crunch time

SRH’s one-run heist vs RR is proof, never count out Cummins the bowler.

Every now and then, the world needs to be reminded, Cummins is really good at this hip thing called fast bowling. Cummins the skipper must be held accountable. It’s not like he isn’t considered among the greatest bowlers of this generation anymore, but it is during the coronation of a fine cricketing leader that the pacer has been flagrantly overlooked.

One can’t deny the privilege to the former. It’s been an education watching Cummins win almost everything there was for him to win in the past 12 months. India would do well not to forget, this here, is the OG Bazball buster. India is unlikely to forget how he scripted two world title wins in the span of five months. And it is in India that he’s led the franchise that has raised the ceiling of batting in T20 over the past couple months. As big as those credentials are, it’s often about the smallest, most basic of calls that Cummins makes on field. As was the case in Sunrisers Hyderabad’s latest win.

🅒ummins
🅒aptain
🅒lutch 🫡#PlayWithFire #SRHvRR pic.twitter.com/YPkYrpNR8u

— SunRisers Hyderabad (@SunRisers) May 3, 2024

Rajasthan Royals were cruising on their way to 202 when the Australian handed the ball to Natarajan for the 12th and the 14th overs. There was no point in keeping the team’s most economical bowler — a death-overs specialist — preserved for the end. SRH needed a wicket and the left-armer gave them one to open up the game. But with Natarajan only having one over left in his quota for the last five, it was Cummins the bowler, who was required to step up.

The odds couldn’t have been more stacked up against him. Off his first two overs, he had gone for 24 without any breakthrough. Off the last five, Rajasthan required 45 runs to win. Consider the dodgy balance within the format that Cummins had stressed upon pre-match. “Batters are getting better and better at hitting the ball out of the stadium, and getting confident to do that. So the challenge is only as bowlers.”

Add to it the misery of a dropped catch, of Yashasvi Jaiswal no less, and it looked like a foregone conclusion in Hyderabad. Even after Jaiswal was sent back, Riyan Parag continued the assault. Until Cummins dug his teeth in for a final spell.

Taking the pace off hadn’t gone his way in the past couple of games. But it was what he used the most to halt the boundaries against the likes of Parag, Shimron Hetmyer, and most effectively Rovman Powell. The two slower bumpers he beat the right-hander in the 19th over with are likely to go down as the best application of the two-short ball rule in this IPL. In both instances, Powell had a swing at the ball like an axe, but couldn’t come to grips with the change in pace.

What made the slower-short ones even more effective were the quicker-full deliveries he mixed them up with. It was what he was seen warming up to ahead of the game on Thursday — placing a cone to mark his accuracy. It’s been a delicacy that put him on the map as a dashing quick. Two things are of paramount importance when it comes to nailing that length.

“First one is, you’ve got to bowl them really fast,” he had shared in cricket.com.au video back in 2020. Second: “Hopefully, there’s swing. So you’ve got to move them into the batter, on his toes, it always makes it a little bit harder for the batter to play those.”

Both the requirements were fulfilled as Cummins got the better of Parag and later, Dhruv Jurel. Bear in mind, these weren’t perfect yorkers. The first one was just about full enough for it to be tougher to get underneath. The time for Parag to execute a slog down long on was cut short with the pace on the ball and that it was angled in sharply from over the wicket, and was met with the toe end of the bat. What got Jurel was his premeditated movement in line of the middle stump. Cummins would cramp him for the room by straying the delivery further down the leg side, once again keeping up the pace.

It was a spell that oozed the all-round abilities of Cummins as a bowler.

Reinventing himself

A bowler, who hasn’t shied away from reinventing himself to better extract from the conditions and the format. There have been plenty of speculations around his place in Australia’s XI now that he’s been removed as the captain. However, it would be remiss to ignore that before he wore the armband, Cummins was the piece that completed Australia’s pace trinity. In the day and age of variations, as Josh Hazlewood remains simple and consistent in his 6-8m good length strip and Mitchell Starc struggles to nail his yorkers, it’s Cummins who can mix things up as well as he did the other night. A friendly reminder that Patrick James Cummins is freakin’ good at this hip thing called fast bowling.

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