Pat Cummins, the Australian skipper, has been ruled out of the first Ashes Test because of a back injury. In his absence, Steve Smith will take over the mantle of captaining the side in the Perth Test, starting on November 21. Smith has already led Australia in 40 Tests, with six of them coming in the last four years as Cummins’ understudy.
On a positive note, Cummins has started running again, and the latest Cricket Australia release noted that he “expects to return to bowling shortly”. Cummins was laid low by back pain after the West Indies Test tour, and it was diagnosed as lumbar stress injury in September. Subsequently, he missed out on playing the limited-overs rubbers against New Zealand and India.
“We’ve grappled with it for a little while,” Australian head coach Andrew McDonald told reporters in Canberra. “The nature of the injury is that you never know and you’re sort of taking it a day by day. “We’ve run out of time. We flagged this a week or so ago that it will take four-plus weeks to get him up and running. We’ve run out of time unfortunately, but really optimistic and hopeful for the second Test match.
“He’ll be back bowling this week, and that’s a huge step. That was the big variable that we wanted to add in. We’re on the journey to that that second Test match, and very hopeful that that will be a positive outcome,” he observed. “Patty will be around the group as well, he’ll come to Perth … and it’ll almost be one of those things where you’ll see him and it’ll almost be a question of, ‘Why isn’t he playing in Perth?’ That’s where we think he’ll be placed by that that stage.”
Incidentally, during the early part of his career, Cummins had his share of back injuries. In fact, he suffered as many as four back injuries between 2011 and 2015. However, since returning to Australia’s Test team after a gap of nearly six years in 2017, Cummins has been relatively injury free.
With Cummins not available, Scott Boland is all set to play the Perth game. The experienced fast bowler has taken 62 wickets in just 14 Tests at a remarkable average of 16.53. Michael Neser, Brendan Doggett and Fergus O’Neill are in the fray as far as reserve pacers are concerned. Meanwhile, Australia’s squad for the opening Test against England is expected to be announced after the third phase of Sheffield Shield games.
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