20 things that have happened since Pat Cummins' last Test appearance
Ahead of the ongoing third test match against India, Australian pacer Mitchell Starc was ruled out of the last two Tests and Pat Cummins was called in as a replacement. Cummins, who is an integral part of Australia’s limited-over teams, is yet to make a name for himself in the longer formats.
Since winning the Man of the Match award in his debut in 2011, Cummins did not play a single Test before being a part of the Australian playing XI in the third Test in Ranchi. In fact, he has played only one first-class match in the last six years as he suffered various injuries that kept him out of action.
Extra cover: 10 things to know about Pat Cummins
Let us take a look at 20 things that happened since Cummins played his last Test.
#1 Australia had four different Prime Ministers (Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull).
#2 Big Bash League didn’t exist. The sixth edition of the BBL got concluded recently.
#3 IPL was the only franchise-based T20 tournament.
#4 Steve Smith was recalled into the Australian Test team and now, he is the captain of Australia in all three formats.
#5 Virat Kohli cemented his place in the Test Team and became India’s captain in all three formats.
#6 R Ashwin (a week before Cummins) and Ravindra Jadeja made their Test debuts and are currently the number 1 in ICC Test bowlers’ rankings.
#7 The World T20 changed hands thrice.
#8 Rohit Sharma was dropped from the Indian ODI team, made a return as an opener, cemented his place and currently, he is one of the best ODI openers.
#9 The record for the fastest ODI 100 was broken twice. First, it was Corey Anderson, who broke Shahid Afridi’s world record and then AB de Villiers broke Anderson’s record.
#10 Sachin Tendulkar was the only batsman to score a double hundred in ODIs. Now, five batsmen have reached the milestone with Rohit Sharma doing it twice.
#11 David Warner made his Test debut, was dropped from the team, came back and was appointed the vice-captain of the Australian team.
#12 Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis, Michael Clarke, Kumar Sangakkara, Brendon McCullum etc. hung up their boots.
#13 England’s James Taylor made his debut for England and retired from the game due to heart problems.
#14 Gautam Gambhir was India’s batting mainstay in Tests before he was dropped from the team in 2012. He made a comeback in 2014, only to be dropped again after playing just 2 matches. He made a comeback again in 2016 before he was finally dropped for one last time.
#15 Champions League T20 became history.
#16 South Africa saw four different Test captains- Graeme Smith, Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers and Faf du Plessis.
#17 Five teams (England, South Africa, Australia, Pakistan and India) held the number 1 spot in the ICC Test rankings.
#18 Rohit Sharma made his Test debut. He was dropped from the Test team four times after that and made a comeback five times.
#19 With the exception of Steve Smith and Nathan Lyon, all the other Australian players in the current playing XI (third Test against India in Ranchi) made their Test debut and played more matches than Cummins.
#20 Few things that are yet to change are India beating Pakistan in World Cups, South Africa choking in ICC events and Shahid Afridi announcing his retirement (& eventual comebacks).