Pat Cummins in huge captaincy revelation ahead of World Cup semi-final
The Aussie captain has discussed his future in the white-ball team.
Pat Cummins has revealed he would be keen to continue on as the white-ball captain of Australia after this year's World Cup. Cummins and his men are set to take on South Africa in the semi-final on Thursday.
Australia started off the World Cup in horror fashion having lost the opening two games against India and South Africa. Cummins' captaincy came into question with his defensive tactics and bowling changes. This has prompted calls for Steve Smith to take over the white-ball captaincy, with Mitchell Marsh expected to take over as T20 captain.
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But it hasn't taken long for Cummins and the Aussies to turn it around having won seven in a row to come third after the group stages. Cummins has slowly silenced the critics as a number of Australians, including Adam Zampa, Glenn Maxwell and Mitchell Marsh, have found form.
As the test captain of Australia, Cummins was asked whether he would want to continue carrying both workloads after this year's World Cup in India. And the world's premier quick bowler admitted he would consider it going forward.
"Potentially, yeah," he said. "We'll chat about it," Cummins said about Andrew McDonald. "We've been pretty open, me and Andrew and George around different times in the year you're going to have different priorities," he added.
"This is a bit of a one-off year where there's three or four big off-season events. After here the focus shifts back to Test cricket for a fair while. Probably like we've done in the past, at times white-ball cricket is going to have to shift (as a priority) so we fully focus on Test cricket.
"There's no end date in sight. I feel like I've been managed really well and looked after in a really, really busy year where you don't really want to give up any cricket."
Pat Cummins set for Indian Premier League move
Cummins is keen to feature in the 2024 T20 World Cup, this is despite not playing a lot of T20 cricket in recent years as he focused on his captaincy duties for his nation. And the fast bowler admitted he would most likely enter into the Indian Premier League auction to play in the tournament, which finished just before the World Cup.
"I feel like I haven’t played a heap of T20 cricket and in some ways I feel like I haven’t played my best T20 cricket for a little while," he added.
"I'm really excited, I'm probably going to go into the IPL auction for next year to try to get some games before that World Cup and push a case to not only make the side but get back to how I feel like I can bowl in T20 cricket."
While question remarks remain over his role as captain for the future, Cummins will be looking at the upcoming semi-final clash with South Africa on Thursday. The match is being played in Kolkata, where there is a 60 percent forecast chance of rain on the Thursday of the match and a weather system moving in that has the potential to develop into cyclonic conditions.
If no play is available, and on the reserve day on Friday, South Africa will advance having finished in front of Australia in the group stage.
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