Image Credit- Getty
Pat Cummins and Australia had an extremely successful
year that could rank among the finest of this century for any Australian team.
It started out as a difficult year for both of them. It began in India with a
respectable Test series loss and concluded there with an incredible World Cup
victory. They won the Ashes in England and, not insignificantly, became the
world champions in Test cricket along the way.
Though the odds were stacked against them in the World
Cup final against hosts and bitter rivals India, Cummins was certain that a
sixth World Cup victory constituted the “pinnacle” of their
accomplishments.
“That’s huge, I think that’s the pinnacle of
international cricket, winning a one-day World Cup,” Cummins reflected, an
hour or so after Glenn Maxwell hit the winning runs to seal an emphatic
six-wicket triumph in Ahmedabad.
“Especially over here in India, in front of a
crowd like this. Yeah, that’s huge. Yeah, it’s been a big year for everyone,
but our cricket team has been here in India, Ashes, World Test Championship,
and to top it off with this is just huge. These are the moments that you’ll
remember for the rest of your life.
“You only get a shot at it every four years. Even
if you have a ten-year career, you might only get two chances at it. And yeah,
it’s just the whole cricket world stops with this World Cup. So it doesn’t get
any better.”
Before the game, Cummins talked about how his team
would quiet a large crowd, and they succeeded in doing so all day. First, the
bowlers stopped India’s barrage of powerplay boundaries, and in the final 40
overs of the innings, they held them to a record-low four. And when they
batted, Travis Head struck three times as many boundaries as the whole Indian
batting order, putting an end to the clamour of over ninety thousand people,
the great majority of whom were Indian supporters.
“Yeah, we did take a second in the huddle just to
acknowledge the silence that was going around the crowd,” he said.
“It just felt like it was one of those days where it was all made for him
to score another hundred like he normally does, so yeah, that was
satisfying.”