Source :- PERTH NOW NEWS
Pat Cummins says his longest break in nine years has set him up to extend his Test career well into his late 30s.
The Australia captain will play just his second Test in 13 months after missing all but the Adelaide contest during last summer’s Ashes series due to a lower back injury.
The 33-year-old quick was out of the Test team from 2011 until 2017 with injury before asserting himself as one of the world’s best pace bowlers.
He will play alongside fellow veteran quicks Josh Hazlewood, 35, and Mitchell Starc, 36, with the great trio featuring together for the first time in 397 days in the opening Test against Bangladesh, which starts in Darwin on Thursday.
Cummins has made full use of his sojourn away from the Test scene and was bullish when asked if the break had the potential to lengthen his time in the long format.
“I hope so. I missed a few Test matches but it feels like I have had a proper 12-month block of basically gym and running and things I don’t think I would have had,” he said.
“Something like my hamstrings, I feel like I have managed the last five or six years. I’m sure they will flare up again but they feel 100 per cent right now.
“I only have to look at someone like Starcy, who can keep going late into his 30s. So I think this block has set me up pretty well.”
His body feels “great” due to a managed pre-season which has enabled Cummins to get himself in prime shape to add to his 315 wickets.
“Mentally, I haven’t really played. I’m fresh. I’ve been itching to get on the plane and get stuck in,” he said.
If all goes well in Australia’s 21 Tests in the next 12 months, Cummins could push his wicket tally beyond 400 as his good mate Starc, with 433 wickets, has done.
“In the last year or so, I have been amazed looking at Starc go about his work,” Cummins said.
“He is a couple of years older than me. It doesn’t feel like we are in worse shape than we ever have been.”
The road ahead is gruelling and 37-year-old paceman Scott Boland and spinner Nathan Lyon, 38, will also aim to be still playing Test cricket at the end of it.
“I think so much of the last six months has been setting us up for the next 12 months, whether that is the medical team or the coaches mapping out that schedule,” Cummins said.
“Now it is all about playing and not thinking too far ahead.”
Lyon, who plays his first Test since Adelaide against England, wants to play every one of the next 21 Tests between now and the end of the Ashes and Cummins has backed him in.
“I’m surprised he didn’t say 21 years,” the skipper grinned.
“There is no reason why not. He is in as good a shape as I have seen him. It is obviously a pretty big workload but he has done it before so he has given himself every chance.”
