Australia captain Cummins expects the Karachi wicket to “break up a bit more” after a dull draw in the first Test
“We’re not frightened of Australia,” he insisted. “The conditions are the same for both teams, and the World Test Championship points are very crucial. As a captain, I wanted us to win. The way our side dominated, we had batters score 150-plus and [bowlers] get wickets. So there’s nothing to panic about. We dominated. We didn’t get a result, unfortunately, but that’s not in our hands. If all the overs that were lost due to rain were played, maybe we’d have a different result.”
“I haven’t seen much of him,” he said. “We’ll watch videos of him and plan accordingly. We’ve started practice here; it’s quite hot and the conditions are different. We have momentum with us; we dominated the first Test and had great individual and team performances. The batters batted well, the bowlers took ten wickets, and Nauman six. The overall team performance was good and we’re trying to take that momentum into this game.”
“The pitch looks like a sporting wicket. There’s lots of talk about how the pitch should have been. Whatever the kind of wicket, you must put in the effort to score runs and take wickets. In Australia, we have the world’s best team here, and performing against them is very difficult; they give you a tough time. The way the team performed and worked hard has been heartening. You need patience, and I think our side showed a lot of patience.”
For Australia, four batters got to half-centuries in the first Test, but all of them fell short of the three-figure mark; Usman Khawaja and Marnus Labuschagne were dismissed three and ten runs shy. Cummins said Australia had spoken about the need to capitalise once the batters were set, but defended his bowlers’ performance, despite the visitors managing only four wickets in 239 overs.
“We spoke about that [batters’ performances] after the game. There are some really good positives from the batting group to get high 400s but over here, if you get yourself in, you’ve to capitalise. Even last week if we are being really critical, we might have missed a chance where we could have got a good lead ahead and had a chance to bowl on day five with a bit of a lead. They’ve been working hard the last couple of days of training. We think this wicket will provide a couple more questions and they are up for it.
“We didn’t get as many wickets as we would have liked but never let the run rate slip, on past tours of the subcontinent we have. We never lost control of the game. As a Test match, it was an absolute outlier, so [we will] put it behind us and come here where we’ll probably get closer to the conditions we would expect in a subcontinent Test. I expect this wicket to break up a little bit more.”
Danyal Rasool is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo. @Danny61000