Melbourne: Australian skipper Pat Cummins is looking to get some game time in Sheffield Shield tournament in order to prepare himself for the upcoming Border-Gavaskar Trophy against India later this year.
The much-awaited Border-Gavaskar Trophy will begin with the First Test, a day match that sets the tone for the series, at Perth Stadium from November 22 to November 26. India has won its last two series in Australia, held in 2018-19 and 2020-21.
Cummins, who had a stint with San Francisco Unicorns in the recently-concluded Major League Cricket (MLC) tournament, has been given rest during Australia’s white-ball series tour of Scotland and England next month. Cummins will spend some time resting and focusing on his strength and conditioning ahead of the home series against India which will take up seven weeks of the schedule and two Test matches in Sri Lanka.
These seven Tests will be crucial in determining if Aussies will have a chance to defend their ICC World Test Championship (WTC) title as they are currently at number two behind the table-toppers India.
Cummins’ last Sheffield Shield match was back in February 2021 for New South Wales and has played just nine matches in the tournament throughout his career. There is also an ODI series against Pakistan during early-November where he could use some time in order to build himself up for the Test matches against India and Sri Lanka.
“Ronnie [coach Andrew McDonald] called me the other day and said we need to talk about this,” Cummins told News Corp as quoted by ESPNCricinfo.
“I prefer to go a little bit fresher but definitely play some cricket going in. So I would say it is either two or three ODIs, plus a Shield [game] or maybe just some Shield, maybe some NSW one-day stuff. I imagine kind of late October/early November will be when I start playing building up for the Tests,” said Cummins.
NSW will have their Shield game against Victoria from October 20 onwards and then will face Queensland from November 1, but the latter overlaps with the ODI series against Pakistan.