Options on the table, but it’s a waiting game for IPL’s $3 million man
PAT Cummins is hopeful his record-breaking Indian Premier League stint will be delayed rather than cancelled, but he knows cricket will not be anybody’s priority for a while.
In a financial sense, no Australian player would lose more from an IPL cancellation than Cummins after he was auctioned off for an international record of $3.35 million last year.
IPL organisers, having already pushed the start of the season back to April 15 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, are discussing extreme isolation measures, potential dates and even alternative host nations for the Twenty20 extravaganza.
Cummins is being kept in the loop by Kolkata Knight
Riders and trying to stay physically fit and mentally sharp.
“Everyone is still really keen for it to go ahead, but the priority is to minimise risk of it spreading,” he said on a video call.
“It’s a holding pattern. The last I spoke to them, they were still really confident and hopeful it’ll be on at some stage.”
But, having bolted alongside British fiancee Becky to a property south of Sydney as the health crisis took hold, the express paceman realises the call is unlikely to come soon as coronavirus infection rates and death counts climb around the world.
“This year’s going to look very different to what we’ve seen before,” Cummins said.
“Unless things improve, I can’t really see many tournaments going on anywhere in the world for a little while.
“It’s awful seeing things like Italy and Spain, but now America and the UK in recent days ... it’s just crazy how quickly it’s developed.”
Australia was slated to tour Bangladesh in June then England in July, but the trips are in doubt.
England’s cricket board, like the AFL and NRL, is fearing 2020 could be a write-off.
“Speaking to a few close mates who play county cricket over there, they’ve gone through the whole pre-season and geared up for the start of their summer,” Cummins said.
“They’re now staring down the barrel of potentially their whole summer of cricket being over . . . the health risk is a big one, but those guys basically have to put their careers on hold.”
The 26-year-old joked David Warner was turning his entire house into a gym, while national coach Justin Langer had been setting the bar high in off-season training, gloating about the 16km run he had done that day.