“We want to play hard and fair, and I think we’ve got it right’

Pat Cummins on leading Australia against South Africa, not getting too big for his boots, and that dismissal of Bairstow in the Ashes Test at Lord’s two years ago

- Donald McRae

As Pat Cummins opens up at the pavilion end, while gazing across the vast empty space of Lord’s a few days before Australia face South Africa in the World Test Championship final, it’s clear that the unexpected opponents this week have helped to frame his remarkable career.

Tomorrow morning, while towering a foot over Temba Bavuma, his 5ft 3in South African counterpart, Cummins will lead Australia for the 34th time, in his 68th Test. The fast bowler stands at the summit of world cricket, his grizzled matinee idol charm allied to the grit which has helped him to become such a successful captain. Australia have won almost everything during his tenure of three and a half years and they are expected to retain their Test title.

But South Africa have been at the heart of the darker moments, from sporting humiliation to moral ignominy, which have dented Australian cricket since Cummins made his international debut. As a teenager he was selected for Australia’s tour of South Africa in 2011. Cummins was 12th man for the first Test at Newlands in Cape Town, which would be the site of the sandpaper scandal that shredded Australia’s reputation in 2018, and he watched in shock as his teammates were bowled out for 47 and crushed in two and a half days.

“That was my first real taste of Test cricket, inside the changing room,” Cummins says ruefully. “I remember being really nervous, even though I wasn’t playing, and fielded for two overs. One ball got hit to me and I fumbled it. I was an 18-year-old thinking: ‘Wow, I’m in the middle of all this’