Cummins to use South Africa ODIs as Test preparation

Pat Cummins is set to use the ODIs against South Africa in late September as a springboard into the Test series with Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood likely to join him.

Cummins, who remains Australia's official ODI captain, has played just two matches in the format since leading the team to the 2023 World Cup with victory over India in Ahmedabad. Steven Smith, who is now retired from ODIs, Mitchell Marsh and Josh Inglis have all captained the one-day side in that period.

Australia will also visit Zimbabwe for a three-match ODI series on September 15, 18 and 20 before heading to South Africa, but Cummins indicated he could miss the Zimbabwe leg of the trip.

"I think I'll be part of at least some of it. I'm not sure I should say this, but think the focus is on the Test series. So a lot of the white-ball [series], and how we play that, would be with an eye to the red ball," Cummins said after squaring the Test series against Bangladesh with a two-day win in Mackay. "So I'd imagine it'd be one, two, probably a maximum of three games out of those six.

"We'll probably all have, I imagine, a week or two off bowling, still do your gym work, and then we'll start building up for that series. I'll probably have an extra week here if I don't play the Zimbabwe [matches]."

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Speaking to Fox Cricket in Mackay, Starc and Hazlewood indicated they were also expecting to play some part in the ODIs before the South Africa Tests.

While Cummins acknowledged the Tests as a priority, there is also an element of planning for the 2027 ODI World Cup where the majority of matches will be held in South Africa with other games in Zimbabwe and Namibia. For Australia, that will come after a run of upto 21 Tests in a 12-month period.

Starc has played nine ODIs since the last World Cup, including all three against India at home last season, while Hazlewood has clocked the most among the big three with 11.

Cummins, who said he had a sore toe at times during the Darwin Test, indicated that the quicks had all got through the Bangladesh series unscathed. There was a brief moment where Scott Boland came into contention for the second Test but Australia fielded the same attack across both matches. Dismissing Bangladesh for 64 and 95 in Mackay did not put huge workloads into them.

Following the ODI series against South Africa, which finishes on September 30 in Potchefstroom, Australia will have a two-day practice match at the same venue on October 3 and 4 before heading to Durban for the first Test.

The tour will mark Australia's first Test series in South Africa since the 2018 ball-tampering scandal although they have twice returned for white-ball series in 2020 and 2023. They had been due to visit for Tests in early 2021 but they were cancelled due to Covid. South Africa beat Australia at Lord's last year in the World Test Championship final.

"They're a really strong side," Cummins said. "We had a big series against them here in Australia a couple of years back and we probably exceeded expectations, played really well, and then they got us back at Lord's last year and outplayed us there.

"So it's going to be big, obviously, in their home conditions [and] places we haven't played Test cricket in for a while. So conditions are always a little bit unknown. Even the difference between Durban to, say, Cape Town can be quite different styles of pitches. It's going to be great. That's why I love playing Test cricket. It's all different conditions, different opponents, different parts of the world. Can't wait."

Australia's ODI squads for the Zimbabwe and South Africa series (as well as A team squads to visit India) are expected to be named next week with the Test squad likely to be announced separately during the early part of September.

Andrew McGlashan is a deputy editor at Cricinfo

27

It was the ball of the day. The classic beating in the flight on unhelpful surfaces. When you show them the flat trajectory, sending them back immediately, but bowling full and getting just enough turn to go past the bat. Keshara Nuwantha's length had, for a change, made Devdutt Padikkal play for what has emerged as the biggest strength of his game. In scoring two centuries in two Tests, playing a lot of spin bowling, Padikkal's standout quality has been the ability to use the depth of the crease and manufacture scoring opportunities against good balls.

That is what makes Test batters. You can afford to wait to score off bad balls in lower levels of cricket. In Tests, you rarely get bad balls. You have to be good enough to score off good balls. It involves some form of risk but you become so good at that shot that you tilt the odds in your favour. Going back to spin and cutting, punching and pulling spinners' good length is what gets Padikkal his runs.

In his 117 at SSC in the second Test, Padikkal scored 52 runs off the back foot against spin. A staggering 47 of those came off good lengths according to Cricinfo's logs. He went back to 59 good-length balls he faced from the spinners.

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Padikkal has the ability to generate power from the back foot, and he can play a variety of shots: the regulation, the late cut, the cut in front of square, the pull both square and in front of square, and the punch. Sometimes just the width is enough.

In Colombo, Shubman Gill had started more fluently than Padikkal, but when Sri Lanka tried to stall the game by bowling outside leg to both the batters, Gill lost all the flow and kept padding the ball but Padikkal went past him by using his foot to cut these balls, some from in front of the stumps.

It is an unfair comparison to make with India's incumbent No. 3, but one that is also natural because B Sai Sudharsan also likes to stay back to spin. It is unfair of course because Sai Sudharsan has played on tougher tracks in India and against higher quality of bowlers. Still, for what it is worth, in their young careers, Padikkal and Sudharsan have gone back to good length from the spinners 52% and 60% of the time, according to Cricinfo logs. It's what happens when they go back that diverges: with the caveat of conditions and quality, Sudharsan strikes at 36 per 100 times of going back to length balls from spinners; Padikkal 61.

It would appear that Padikkal is a more dynamic batter, not just off the back foot but also able to use his reach better, as he did in the first Test to unsettle Prabath Jayasuriya out of the gate. This ability seems to sit well with India's team management.

"For me the intent he has shown, the temperament he has shown, and with the pace he batted as well…" India's batting coach Sitanshu Kotak said. "He batted with a very good strike rate as well. The way he batted is a really really good sign for us. He has been waiting for his turn for the last year and a half. Maybe two years. I am so happy that the way he prepared… that he got his opportunity."

Padikkal vs Sai Sudharsan is not a comparison that Kotak wanted to be drawn into. "He batted really well," Kotak said when asked if India had found their long-term No. 3 in Padikkal. "But I feel even Sai Sudharsan batted really well. He got out on 90 or something like that. Devdutt obviously converted it into hundreds. They are both new batters, they bat well, they can open also, they can go at 3 also. The way Devdutt bats, he can bat 5 also. It is not… it is more promising for us the way he approached the game and he delivered. That is a big positive."

It is highly unlikely that Padikkal will lose his No. 3 slot now after these two centuries, especially when Sai Sudharsan was a bit of an experiment, the first specialist batter to debut for India with a first-class average under 40 since WV Raman back in 1988. Whether they keep Sai Sudharsan around with the squad or ask him to score runs in domestic cricket in order to make a comeback, if Padikkal can keep creating scoring opportunities off good balls from spinners, it will be a big positive for them in next year's Border-Gavaskar Trophy.