Cummins missing white-ball series against South Africa with Hazlewood and Johnson to miss T20Is against West Indies.
Cummins to sit out white-ball matches against South Africa.
As part of his preparation for the Ashes later in the year, Pat Cummins will miss the white-ball matches against South Africa next month.
Along with Travis Head and Mitchell Starc, Cummins had already been rested for the five-match T20I series against the West Indies. After initially being included in the squad, Josh Hazlewood is now among those going home after the Test series, with Xavier Bartlett being confirmed as his substitute.
Cummins will enter a phase of fitness work prior to the home summer, while Hazlewood will play against South Africa in the Top End in August. This tour consists of three T20Is and three ODIs around Darwin, Cairns, and Mackay.
He hopes to play in some of the limited-overs matches against India before the Ashes in late November, as well as a brief T20I visit to New Zealand in early October. Additionally, he might play for New South Wales in the Sheffield Shield, something he didn’t do before to the Border-Gavaskar Trophy the previous season.
“I’ll have a good training block for the next couple of months, six weeks or so,” Cummins told reporters at Sabina Park. “Probably not bowling, but lots of gym work. [My] body feels pretty good, but there’s always little bits and pieces you’re always trying to get right and then build up for the summer. So it’ll probably look like white-ball [cricket]…we’ve got some [matches against] New Zealand, India, potentially a Shield game and then into the home summer.”
“There’s a lot of Shield cricket to come and some Aussie A stuff as well,” Cummins said on the significance of the final Test in the West Indies. “I think [if] you do well at Test level, any time it’s going to kind of make your case more compelling. I think there’s a bit of a connection to the summer, but it feels a long way away at the moment.”