“Early in my career, I found it a hard balance between Test cricket and T20, and I was getting too funky,” Cummins said at the Ekana Stadium in Lucknow, the day before Australia prepared to play South Africa. “With one-day cricket, your roles can be very different – from being an opening bowler with a ball that swings, to coming on first change and maybe bowling cross-seamers where you are trying to defend and get your wickets through pressure. It’s a different kind of challenge to the other formats.”
It is also what Cummins called “the most physically taxing” of the three formats, because as we know from the ICC slogan – it really, truly takes one day. One. Whole. Day. Although the duration of a Test and the intensity of an T20 can’t be matched in an ODI, the amount of time spent on the feet and the kilometres run in the legs will be more than both the other versions of the game.
“The biggest challenge is that you’ve got ten overs [to bowl]. It’s quite a physical format,” Cummins said of ODIs. “I find it the most physically taxing if you are doing two or three games in a week. We are doing 15k (kilometres) in a 50-over match.”
And then there’s the trade-off between consistency and creativity that must come into play in one-day cricket, where some level of patience is required alongside a touch of all-out attack.
“In T20, if you bowl one really good over that can be match-winning. But in one-day cricket, it’s not normally the case,” Cummins said. “And it’s rare that conditions are in the bowlers’ favour, which is fine. It’s just a challenge you’ve got to try and deal with. It’s tough but I do enjoy it.”
Cummins also feels his own form is “in as good a place as it’s ever been”, and backs himself to be “almost be prepared for anything”, including maybe “death bowling”. Against a South Africa line-up that is in good form, he also expects that he may have to try “to create a wicket out of nothing”, even as unorthodoxy is also something he has been working on.
All that does not take away from his inexperience as ODI captain – since being named ODI captain in October last year, he has played only five out of Australia’s 15 ODIs – and the problems Australia have to solve in the middle overs. That’s where they lost the game against India, after they slipped from 110 for 2 in the 28th over to 199 all out.
“It’s no secret that the [middle-overs] period of the game seems to be the most important in one-day cricket,” Cummins said. “How do we create partnerships? If they’re bowling well, how do we shift the pressure back on to their bowlers, and try and force their hand to make some changes? It’s a real delicate balance in one-day cricket of not taking huge risks, but it’s not like Test cricket where you can wait it out. You have to keep the run rate ticking over.”
The middle overs are also thought to be the hill on which ODI cricket may die, unless the narrative that unfolds in that passage is captivating even if nuanced. As Cummins hinted, those overs are the Goldilocks of the game where players are required to not do too much of one thing or too little of another, and for Australia, it’s about finding out how much is just right.
Firdose Moonda is ESPNcricinfo’s correspondent for South Africa and women’s cricket
