Pat Cummins is prepared to push the envelope in his bid to be fit for the start of the Ashes, with the paceman suggesting the World Test Championship final may have been the trigger for his back injury.
Cummins remains determined to lead Australia in the first Test against England in November despite medical scans this week showing a lower-back flare-up had not settled in the weeks after Australia’s Test series in the Caribbean.
The 32-year-old has been restricted to light duties in the gym since returning home and he will not run or bowl over the coming weeks in the hope his bone stress settles. It’s the type of injury he knows well from the early years of his international career.
Cummins has not identified a return to bowling date, saying only that medicos will “reassess” him in a month’s time. Selectors are prepared for him to play in Perth with no Sheffield Shield match practice under his belt, having already ruled him out of upcoming white-ball games against New Zealand and India.
While that would leave Cummins at risk of the injury developing into a stress fracture, he said it could be a risk worth taking to avoid the “devastating” prospect of missing one of Australian sport’s biggest events.
“I’m never going to go into a Test match unless you think you can finish the Test match,” Cummins told cricket.com.au.
“But when you’re 18 or 19, you’re like, ‘Let’s make sure this is the perfect rehab, whether it takes an extra six months’. Whereas, I’m happy to be a bit like, ‘Well, it’s an Ashes series, whatever it takes to play it’.
“Then, say, at the end, if you’re still not 100 per cent and you need to then have a bit of a break next year … there’s not another Ashes series.”
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Cummins added: “I think you’re willing to take a few risks and be a little bit aggressive to try and play as much Tests as you can.
“At this stage of my career, I feel like I can probably get up to speed a bit quicker than when I was 18 or 19.
“Back then you probably feel like you need to play a few Shield games or one-dayers. I’m pretty confident even if I don’t get a chance to play a Shield game, I can get up to speed pretty quickly.”
Cummins said the decision over whether to play him in Perth could also hinge on how fellow quicks Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Scott Boland are tracking.
“Probably to some degree it’s (a question of) who’s fit? Who do we think is around?” he told cricket.com.au. “If we’ve got fast bowlers who are bowling well and absolutely firing on all cylinders, then maybe that’s a factor as well.
“It’s (nearly) 12 weeks until the first Test, it feels a long way away, so we’ve got plenty of time.”
While difficult to pinpoint the precise cause of his injury, Cummins pointed to the sharp uptick in bowling loads he endured during the World Test Championship final in June.
Cummins toiled for 35.1 overs in Australia’s defeat to South Africa at Lord’s. In four days, that saw him send down two-thirds of the number of balls he had bowled during the entire preceding 10-week Indian Premier League campaign.
“Sometimes you might just get unlucky and bowl a lot of overs in, say, the World Test Championship final and that’s enough to kind of start it,” he said.
“Through the West Indies, I felt like maybe it was a little bit sore, but nothing abnormal for fast bowlers, you’ve always got some niggles.
“Once you get home and everything settles down, it just hung around a little bit.”
Cummins bowled another 49 overs in under a fortnight in the first two Tests in the Caribbean, before a lighter load in Australia’s thumping win in Jamaica. He bowled just 11 overs in the first innings and then didn’t take the ball at all in the second when the Windies were skittled for 27 in just 14.3 overs.
A post-tour X-ray showed a “little bit going on” in his back. Cummins then said Monday’s follow-up scan “was not terrible, but enough to know there’s a little bit there and have got to be careful for the next little bit.”
Cummins is grateful the scan has discovered the issue months, not weeks, out from the Ashes.
Vitally, the medical images did not show he had suffered the kind of stress fracture he dealt with several times in his early-twenties and then again in 2018 not long after his successful return to Test cricket.
“It’s similar (to previous injuries). But I’ve been really lucky, the last seven or eight years I haven’t really had much,” said Cummins, who has missed just one Test through injury since taking over as Test captain four years ago.
“In 2018 I had a full-blown stress fracture, which kept me out for a full off-season. But I’ve had a really good run as far as fast bowling goes and have been well looked after.
“It feels worlds away (from those more serious injuries). I’ve bowled a lot over the last few years, so something was bound to happen at some point. But hopefully I get this right and don’t miss too much cricket.”
2025-26 NRMA Insurance Men’s Ashes
First Test: November 21-25, Perth Stadium, 1.30pm AEDT
Second Test: December 4-8, The Gabba, Brisbane (D/N), 3.30pm AEDT
Third Test: December 17-21: Adelaide Oval, 11am AEDT
Fourth Test: December 26-30: MCG, Melbourne, 10.30am AEDT
Fifth Test: January 4-8: SCG, Sydney, 10.30am AEDT
