Image Credit- ICC
Almost everything in life is impacted by recency bias,
but cricket is particularly afflicted. It suffers from both nostalgia prejudice
and its opponent, recency bias, simultaneously. Even when a new GOAT is
discovered every day, there’s a chance that we will miss true greatness while
it’s still with us.
This could be the reason why people do not mention
Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, and Pat Cummins in the same sentence with
people like Glenn McGrath, Brett Lee, and Jason Gillespie. The fact that these
three are picked for limited-overs matches despite their minimal playing
experience is even causing dissatisfaction among Australian cricket fans. Or
maybe they are just too woke for certain people.
Still, think about the corpus of work. They have now
won two ODI World Cups, a T20 World Cup, a World Test Championship, retained
the Ashes since their formation, and are currently leading the second-best Test
team in history at home. Cummins was a member of the squad but did not play in
the XI in 2015.
Their only career setbacks have been two home series
losses to an Indian team that has been around for generations and an
unsuccessful Test series in India. India has been virtually unbeatable at home,
outperformed their injured squad during the 2018–19 tour, and the 2020–21
series might have gone any way. This is not because they are any worse bowlers.
This triumvirate is unstoppable. The most direct and
aggressive player is Starc; he is full, quick, at the stumps, swinging the new
ball and reversing the old. Among those who have claimed 200 ODI wickets, he
has the highest strike rate; in Tests, he is ranked sixth. Hazlewood lacks
speed, yet he can control length perfectly and place the ball just where he
wants it to go.
There would be a change in the final. A tale was
revealed in the picture of Cummins capturing the pitch. Cummins, the captain,
considered it nearly a collector’s piece. At a spinner’s length, the pitch
appeared to be dead in the middle and dry around the edges. Alternatively put,
kryptonite.
However, if Australia was to stand a chance against
the invading Indian team, it would all come down to the three quicks. They may
only hope that the pitch quickens in the evening, as it did for England vs New
Zealand at the same ground, and insert India, restricting them in the process.
Limit India: It’s simple to say. They would need to
first survive the fury of the fastest hitting side during the powerplay without
any new-ball movement to their advantage in order to accomplish it. The most
reliable batter, who ended up being the Player of the Tournament, would then
need to be defeated. Additionally, they would need to make their spinner appear
better because he isn’t a great match-up against the Indian middle order.
Central to it all was Cummins. Despite the threat
posed by the Indian spinners on a sluggish pitch, he choose to field. In
actuality, Australia entered the game because of the slowness. They lacked a
deep third for Rohit Sharma, the fastest and most effective batsman during that
stage of the game, from the first ball. Rather, the deep point allowed them to
bowl defensively.
Not with miraculous balls, but with a single skidding
short ball and the tournament’s greatest catch, two wickets were secured. In
the middle overs, Cummins assumed responsibility for hitting the middle of the
pitch once more. Additionally, he persuaded his fielders to throw the ball
whenever possible. They even gave in on overthrows, but the throws had to be
made. They were going to get it to reverse.
When the new ball began to bounce around in the
evening, they would have felt a bit like they had been there before, but
Cummins—the first out-and-out bowling captain to win an ODI World Cup—turned
out to have read the conditions precisely.
This is fast-bowling royalty arranging victories in a
variety of formats and circumstances. They have only had one frontline spinner
at their last two limited-overs World Cups in Asia in the past two years. They
have broken a few clichés in the process. Captains cannot be fast bowlers.
Because you need variance, test bowlers are not good limited-overs bowlers.
runs in the final on board. Naughty or woke shouldn’t apply to fast bowlers.
One conventional wisdom remains, though: you can’t
ever count out quality fast bowlers. Especially when there are three of them.