WHY I NEVER STOPPED BELIEVING
For six years, Pat Cummins looked like he would never fulfil his cricketing destiny. One crushing injury blow after the next made the prospect of the fastbowling prodigy playing a Test on home soil almost impossible to imagine. When the landmark moment finally arrived at the opening Ashes Test at the Gabba last summer, up in the stands Cummins’ mother, Maria, was overcome with emotion — not from what she could see with her own eyes.
Rather, it was from what the stranger sitting next to her could not.
As she watched her son charge into bowl for his country for the first time in a home Test, she listened to the action being described in vivid detail by a blind man beside her who was commentating to himself.
For most, Cummins’ extraordinary comeback from chronic injury setbacks would be theatre enough. But for his mother, listening to this visually impaired man trying to imagine, through sounds from the field, her son running into bowl — a scene she had envisaged in her own backyard many times as young Pat developed his talent, the moment overcame Maria.
“He has been going for years and just listens to the sound of cricket,” Pat Cummins says of the stranger seated next to his mother.
“He visualises through what he hears and he was explaining my bowling action to mum and dad.
“He said, ‘Cummins, he’s a strong build, he runs in hard and bowls fast. I like his action.’
“It was just a totally different outlook on people and how much cricket means to them and how someone could find a passion in cricket even if they can’t see.
“I think it made mum pretty emotional.”
It took the sandpaper furore to open the eyes of an Australian cricket team trapped in its own bubble and understand the true worth of this game to the nation. But Cummins, 25, is a rare breed of sports star who has kept his sense of perspective.
He might have been the highest-paid university student in Australia, but completing a Bachelor of Business and Marketing degree during his years of injury hell set him on the path to being a well-rounded cricketer. It’s no surprise Cricket Australia has featured Cummins as a chief character in its marketing and advertising since Sandpapergate.
Even with his grounding, Cummins admits his endless run of injuries after his stunning Test debut as a teenager in South Africa in 2011 was mentally challenging.