Cummins’ injury concerns heading into this winter’s Ashes could be a case of a career about to come full circle – but not in the way Australia’s captain will have wanted.<\/p>\n
He made his Test debut as an 18-year-old in 2011 against South Africa, becoming the second-youngest player to take a five-wicket haul in an innings at that time, despite sustaining a heel injury during the match.<\/p>\n
But his explosive debut proved to be something of a false dawn. Cummins had to wait six years to make his second Test appearance as a young body failed to withstand the load of fast bowling, suffering repeated stress fractures to his lower back.<\/p>\n
Fast-forward 14 years, to the upcoming winter of 2025, and back problems have once again resurfaced, albeit this time as “lumbar bone stress” rather than a fracture. He has not bowled a ball since July.<\/p>\n
If back injuries have plagued Cummins’ Test career, periods of fitness have been filled with ebullient excellence as a thoroughbred quick.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old, who was made Test captain in the wake of Tim Paine’s resignation shortly before the 2021-22 Ashes, has taken 309 Test wickets at an average of 22.10.<\/p>\n
He is even more formidable in Australia, taking 177 wickets at 19.92, while he has also taken 91 wickets against England in just 19 matches.<\/p>\n
In the most recent Ashes series in 2023, Cummins played in all five Tests, one of only two bowlers to do so along with Stuart Broad, taking 18 wickets.<\/p>\n
A talismanic leader, Cummins enjoyed a glorious 2023 as captain, taking six wickets in Australia’s triumphant World Test Championship final and starring in their 50-over World Cup final victory in Ahmedabad – both against India.<\/p>\n
He is the only captain in Test history to win the World Test Championship, World Cup and an Ashes series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cummins’ injury concerns heading into this winter’s Ashes could be a case of a career about to come…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-197034","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}