That adolescent would soon blossom into a fearsome tearaway, he would break ribs and toes, evolve into a fast bowler awed and feared the world around, become the first fast bowler to captain Australia in 64 years, and the first ever to claim an Ashes. Yet, it is his smile that first strikes you. Put the most complicated question across to him in interviews. He would smile and then answer. Throw him the red ball at any critical juncture of the match. He would smile and produce a spell of unremitting hostility. Engage him with the most cryptic crossword, one of his pastimes, he would smile and meditate over it. Chide him, banter him, he would still keep smiling. “He always did it with a smile, and that I thought was the trait of a true champion,” the coach says.

It’s difficult to remember an Australian captain in recent times who smiled more often, or smiled at all. Steve Waugh smiled mildly and measuredly; Ricky Ponting grinned; Michael Clarke often smirked; Tim Paine sniggered. Steve Smith was all of these, yet he smiled thriftily, and even when he smiled it was not as disarming as that of Cummins. He has broken the archetype of an Australian captain as a throbbing Alpha Male specimen.

On the field, he rarely gets agitated or antagonistic. He banters sometimes—that smile in attendance—but seldom engages in a heated exchange of expletives. His celebrations are solemn affairs, as though he is chanting a requiem in his mind for the departed batsmen. “I don’t like wasting time on things like sledging and those types of things,” he had once said.

Consciously or not, the side he captains has embraced his characteristics. Their recent tours to the subcontinent—one of the three he won—was largely devoid of incidents or scandals. Pre-series trash-talk was almost non-existent, spur-of-the-moment skirmishes never blew into acrimony and reached the match referee’s room. Peace and order prevailed.

Some of his critics crooned that his team was soft, devoid of bark, contrasted by the more gung-ho approach and positive results after Smith stood in when Cummins flew home to be with his ailing mother. But this WTC final, it would be the Cummins version of Australia.

Cummins would reason about his less-sledging approach in his biography by Ron Reed, Cometh the hour, Cummins the Man: “From a couple of years ago, it was obvious the world wanted all cricket teams, especially the Aussies, to tone it down a bit. I keep encouraging all our players to be themselves. They do not have to try to impress anyone or sledge just because it might have been done in the past. I have been really proud of how they have conducted.”

Top of off stump!

200 Test wickets for Pat Cummins! #PlayOfTheDay @nrmainsurance | #AUSvWI pic.twitter.com/KAFmg2qdbg

— cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) December 2, 2022

It was not a one man’s decision. “We all spoke about it beforehand, and we all bought into it. It was not just me. I kind of laid out what I wanted and the environment that I want and shape that. We sat down and nutted it out,” he says in his biography.

The approach needs some contextualising too. His ascent to captaincy came at a time when Australian cricket needed a makeover, when the gnarling-snarling Aussie prototype seemed manufactured, where there was so much quasi-machismo, when there was a startling lack of identity, there has been an unceasing morality crisis, from the Sandpaper-gate scandal to Tim Paine’s sexting storm. Cummins was the man for the crisis, and a perfect choice he turned out to be.

Cummins has injected both grace and direction, though at the expense of being called soft at times. But beneath a less nasty approach is an invisible steeliness, relentlessness and indefatigability that have been Australian cricketing ideals for ages. Cummins’s men play tough, hard cricket, but they don’t pretend like tough, hard men.

In defeat, as he encountered in India, he remained graceful, backing his players, copping the blame on himself for the defeat, and showering praise on the victors. In triumph, he has maintained dignity. After defeating England in the Ashes, he commiserated with them, wondering how difficult it could have been for them to travel and play a series during the pandemic. “Thanks for coming, I know it wasn’t easy,” he would say.

In the previous Ashes in Australia, the backdrop to the presentation was a giant pair of inflatable hands, one painted in Australian colours holding up four fingers, the other, in English livery, clenched to signal zero. The gesture was mocked as a gross celebration of triumphalism. But not this time. Later, in the series against India, he gifted an autographed shirt off all the team members to Cheteshwar Pujara on his 100th Test in New Delhi.

It was a small gesture that revealed his cricketing ethos, entrenched in mutual respect and sportsmanship, which former Australia fast bowler Geoff Lawson captured in his column for Sydney Morning Herald. “He is making Test cricket look like a game of fun and consequence rather than do or die. Perhaps, his perspective is shaped by the seriousness of world events,” he wrote.

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The calmer approach has won his teammates over too. The most seasoned of all his teammates, Nathan Lyon, would say: “Pat is extremely calm as captain. I think Australia play their best when they are calm, with smile on our faces and enjoying it. Pat really hit that home.”

There, though, is a sterner, practical side of him too. Beneath the smiling exterior is a classical Australian bowling hangman. If not for the toughness he would not have bounced back from a spate of injuries that forced him to miss 63 Tests. He would have quit and perhaps embarked on a management career, or would not have flown back and forth from Sydney to Perth to train under Dennis Lillee. There he overhauled his action, rediscovered his zest for the game and fell in love with red wine.

A day after Justin Langer was asked to exit, his former teammate Mitchell Johnson wrote a scathing column. “Cummins has been lauded as some type of cricketing saint since his elevation to the top job this summer… In the wake of the disgraceful white-anting of Langer as coach, it (Baggy Green) stands for selfishness,” wrote Johnson. A band of old teammates sprung in Langer’s defence, among them legends like Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden.

But Cummins remained unswayed by public perceptions or the disgust of the players he grew up idolising. In a press conference a few days later, he calmly explained the circumstances, strongly and eloquently presented his side. “He was the perfect man for the times, he did a fantastic job – I absolutely loved working with him,” he said, almost paying a tribute to him. Then he struck the heart of the issue. “Some of these skill sets (desired by players) are a little bit different to perhaps his traditional coaching style. But we think now is the right time for a different direction. It’s a matter of opinion but we think it’s the right one.”

There was no rancour or angst, no passion or emotion in his words. He was merely clarifying his side, without denigrating the other, or getting personal. There was no hubris in his carefully-worded sentences. There was nothing between the lines. But towards the end he said with a smile, “Just as his old mates stood for him, I will stand for my mates too.”

These were not hollow words. He is caring and sensitive. So much so that he asked the jubilant teammates after the Ashes triumph to not pour champagne on Usman Khawaja, a practising Muslim.

Pat Cummins realizing that Khawaja had to stand away because of the alcohol so he tells his team to put it away and calls Khawaja back immediately. A very small but a very beautiful gesture❤️pic.twitter.com/fb0GY1qKsI

— Zohaib (Cricket King)🇵🇰🏏 (@Zohaib1981) January 16, 2022

The next day Khawaja put out a video, saying: “If this video doesn’t show you that the boys have my back, I don’t know what will. They stopped their normal champagne celebrations so I could rejoin. Inclusivity in the game and our values as a sport are so important. I feel like we are trending in the right direction.” In the past the left-handed batsman had spoken about his difficulty in fitting into the alcohol-drinking culture of Australian cricket.

It’s a more relevant gesture because Khawaja is religious and Cummins not so. Both are friends, who engage in deeper non-cricket conversations. “Because I’m very religious and he’s not religious at all, we’ve had really good conversations around religion and life, and it’s actually been really in-depth. I think he finds it hard that I’ve always loved science and I’m religious,” Khawaja told Sydney Morning Herald.

The incident reveals the broader life perspective of Cummins. He is not a cricket tragic to the extent of devouring all his time and thoughts on the game. He likes filling crosswords, reads a variety of books, from management to fiction, is sensitive to climate issues, masterminded the Cricket for Climate initiative—a movement whose goal is for cricket clubs across Australia to achieve net-zero emissions over the next decade—donated $50,000 ‘to purchase oxygen supplies for India’s hospitals during the pandemic, collaborates with UNICEF for humanitarian work and is part of the anti-racism campaign Reflect Forward.

pic.twitter.com/2TPkMmdWDE

— Pat Cummins (@patcummins30) April 26, 2021

Wholahan could sense his humaneness from a younger age. He remembers the first time he returned after his Test debut, with piles of jerseys and kits; or him playing for the club with an injury even after he became an international cricketer, or him giving his credit card to a club teammate to celebrate a win. “He is special, a cricketer of rare gifts and a human being of rare values,” he says.

In 853 Tests, fast bowlers (discounting all-rounders) have captained Australia just 16 times. Pat Cummins: 15; Ray Lindwall: 1. It’s not an Aussie aberration—fast bowling captains are rare. No current Test team is captained by a pacer. There are practical reasons too. The challenges are myriad and unique—be it balancing the hostility required during his own spells with a calm disposition overall, setting fields and devising plans while trying to catch breath between overs, juggling the workloads of himself and his fellow bowlers objectively or staying injury-free throughout lengthy series.

Little wonder then that Mike Brearely contended that making a fast bowler the captain should be the last resort. “It takes an exceptional character to know when to bowl, to keep bowling with all his energy screwed up into a ball of aggression, and to be sensitive to the needs of the team, both tactically and psychologically. They tend either to over-bowl themselves or not to bowl enough, from conceit, modesty or indeed self-protection.” he wrote in The Art of Captaincy.

Besides, they are more prone to injuries and long recovery periods, implying that there could be long spells when the deputy has to stand in. The extra mental stress could lead to rapid burnouts, and they could end up underachieving. An often cited example is Bob Willis, who led England in 18 Tests. He won seven and lost five, but his teammates were not the happiest lot. Derek Pringle once wrote: “He would marshal proceedings from mid-off often in a daze, his bowling, with its long and winding run up, having taken so much out of him”. Ian Botham sympathised: “We virtually set fields for him because he was so focussed running in quick and getting everything right at his end.”

But so far, captaincy has not knackered Cummins. He comes across as a democratic captain, making decisions as a group rather than individual, the identity of his team being collectivism rather than individualism. He is not one for funky field placings; he does not interfere with bowlers in setting fields; not an in-your-ears captain; he does not keep barking out instructions; he is not theory-heavy strategist. Not that he is uninvolved, but that he does not impose himself on his teammates. He is not the most demonstrative of captains, but is aggressive and relentless, driven and determined.

At the same time, captaincy has not taken a toll on his bowling—he averages 21.22 as non-captain and 21.59 as captain. His is not a team of world-beaters, but somehow his team keeps unearthing heroes. The transformation of Travis Head is a classic case in point. His defence of Head lifted the batsman’s morale when he was passing through tough times, criticised for getting out ‘ugly’. Cummins would defend him: “As a captain I don’t care if he gets out differently. I just want him to go out and play freely.”
Head would soon become an Ashes hero.

Cummins became the first bowler-captain to win an Ashes for his country. Within a few weeks, he could add a WTC crown and another Ashes to his bag of honours. But his legacy, irrespective of how the next phase of captaincy turns out, would be of mould-breaker—a captain who is a fast bowler, a non-Alpha Male captain of Australia, and an Australian captain who smiles.
And makes the audience smile too.