Pat Cummins admits there is a “tension point” in cricket’s current club-versus-country landscape, stressing that although he wants to keep playing Test cricket into the twilight of his career, that may not be the case for coming generations.
Cummins has travelled to India for the start of the IPL, which begins this weekend, but the Sunrisers Hyderabad captain has revealed he will not feature in the tournament until its halfway point at the earliest.
“I’m bowling basically every third day at the moment,” Cummins, who has been limited to one match over the past nine months due to a lumbar stress injury, told the Business of Sport podcast. “We’ve mapped out a plan to get me right by the middle of the tournament, so hopefully if nothing goes wrong, I’ll play the back half plus the finals.”
His arrival for cricket’s biggest annual event comes as Australian cricket wrestles with the prospect of selling stakes in Big Bash League teams. It is feared the country’s best talent may be lost to the growing money available on domestic T20 franchise circuit abroad if the league is not privatised.
Cummins reiterated his desire to keep playing all three formats for Australia even as many of his long-time teammates have given away either ODIs (Steve Smith, Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis) or T20Is (Mitchell Starc) to prolong their careers.
Australia’s Test and ODI skipper suggested he will continue prioritising important series and taking extended two-to-three month “forced rest” blocks to stay fresh for major Test campaigns and World Cups.
It’s a model that has served him and Australia well, even allowing for his now long-running battle with his back injury. While he has played only two ODIs since the last 50-over World Cup in 2023 and no T20Is since the 2024 World Cup in that format, Cummins had missed just two of 24 Tests his side played between June 2023 and the start of last home summer.
“Still very keen to play all three formats and at the moment I think we can make it work. I love Test cricket,” said Cummins. “Hopefully I’m in a cadence where I can keep doing that for three, four, five years and don’t have to forgo Test cricket.”
But fulfilling his almost A$4m IPL deal with Sunrisers, coached Australia assistant Dan Vettori, has become a key part of Cummins’ calendar.
The 32-year-old also expressed his interest at one day playing in the Hundred, while he signed a four-year contract with Major League Cricket side San Francisco Unicorns in 2024.
Asked about the balance between international and franchise cricket contracts, Cummins said: “I think it’s at a tension point. It has been for a while, but I think it’s only growing.
“As each of these franchise leagues get well capitalised, get more sophisticated – some of these Indian franchise owners are now branching out and owning different leagues.
“What we experience in Australia and in England is Test cricket is very well supported, the Test summer has big crowds and a lot of attention. That’s not the same for every other international side. Every country has slightly different challenges.
“As Australian captain, something we speak about is how do we make sure we’ve got our best Australian guys to choose from when we’re picking a Test side or an ODI side, because there is so much demand for them elsewhere.
“Even the way we contract players and talk about whether we let players go or not has evolved a lot in the last five or so years, because we don’t want to lose them, so you’ve got to give them a little more leash than maybe you did previously.”
Cummins used the clash between this August’s two-Test series against ninth-ranked Bangladesh in northern Australia and the UK’s Hundred tournament as an example of where leading all-format players are leaving money on the table.
Australian white-ball players Tim David (who has a A$658,000 deal with Trent Rockets), Mitch Marsh ($376,000 with Sunrisers Leeds) and Adam Zampa ($357,000 with London Spirit) appear free to play in the month-long tournament.
Marsh and Zampa were both CA-contracted for 2025-26 and are certain to be again in ’26-27. David was upgraded to a national deal in ’25-26, and could again meet the minimum threshold of international games played to get upgraded again in ’26-27.
Test players like Cummins, Travis Head, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood would likely have commanded similar money in the Hundred.
“The interesting point is, big Ashes series, all the main guys want to play that series,” said Cummins. “(But), for example, during the Hundred this season we’ve got two Test matches against Bangladesh.
“All our guys that will play in that Test (series) have opted out of going into the Hundred auction – but that’s not going to be the case forever.
“Some of our guys are saying no to a half a million pounds for 20 days’ work to go and play those two Test matches against Bangladesh – so I think it is a tension point.
“This is the essence: our guys are so keen to play for Australia that they’re happy to forgo that, but I don’t think we can just accept that’s always going to be the case forever.”
Cummins qualified his comments by acknowledging: “If you’re playing all three formats in Australia you’re very well compensated.”
Cricket Australia’s chief executive Todd Greenberg, who was the Australian Cricketers’ Association boss when the existing Memorandum of Understanding was signed in 2023, has conceded that pay deal will likely be renegotiated before the end of its lifespan in 2027.
“I remember saying to (former CA CEO) Nick Hockley at the time when we did it, I’m not sure if this will see its life,” Greenberg told reporters in December. “I probably stand by that. I don’t know if this MOU will get to the end.”
But Cummins’ warning, which comes ahead of what will be a generational shift in the Test side over the coming years, is clear.
“You probably could, almost certainly, if you played every other league you’d probably be better off in the short term,” Cummins said.
“But our guys love playing Test cricket at the moment. But I don’t think that’s going to be the case forever. Someone else might have different priorities, so we’ve got to make sure that we adapt to that.
“We are starting to talk about longer-term deals to lock in the top-tier talent to Aussie cricket.”
