Pat Cummins will miss the final T20I against Pakistan in order to get adequate rest and preparation time for the upcoming Test series. The pacer didn’t join the squad that flew down from Canberra to Perth, and instead went to Sydney.
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However, according to Sydney Morning Herald, he is expected to play in New South Wales’ Sheffield Shield game against Western Australia at the SCG, which will also include other national team players like Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Nathan Lyon, Steve Smith and David Warner.
That will be his only red-ball preparation before the Test squad assembles for a camp in Brisbane ahead of the Test series against Pakistan.
“It’s a little bit of recovery and preparing for the Test match,” Justin Langer, the Australian head coach, said. “We’ve got so much cricket on and he plays a lot of it so we’ve got the opportunity for him not to take the long flight to Perth.”
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In the last two weeks, Cummins was involved in five T20Is, the longest stretch of games for him in the format since the 2012 ICC World T20. Even Mitchell Starc featured in all the games except the one he missed to attend his brother’s wedding. In the presence of the full-strength pace attack, Australia have thoroughly dominated their contests against Sri Lanka and Pakistan in the last few weeks. And with the T20 World Cup coming up next year, they are expected to stick with best options.
“In the past we have used these opportunities to rest some of those guys,” Langer explained. “But we need to get better at it, it’s something that is a priority for Australian cricket. So therefore you want to play your best players as often as you can.
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“We’re playing a really good defensive game. In T20 I’ve thought for seven or eight years that how you’re bowling unit plays and how you field is really important. We’re working to build all our bowling stocks so they are able to do those jobs for us. We’re really lucky, we’ve got great depth of squad.”
