Ace: Cummins lauded his bowling partner Starc who has never gone wicketless in 23 World Cup matches since 2015.
| Photo Credit: MOORTHY RV

With three wins in its last three matches, Australia has finally arrived at the World Cup and skipper Pat Cummins believes his side has ‘nailed’ the brand of cricket it wanted to play.

“Our group’s big on talking about the style that we want to play, and I think in the first two games not only did we not win, but I think we didn’t really nail the style that we wanted to play. I think in the last few games you’ve seen us be a bit more aggressive — batting and bowling… That’s a standard we want to keep going with for the rest of the tournament, Cummins said ahead of the match against New Zealand at the HPCA Stadium here.

In the losses against India and South Africa, the Aussie bowlers allowed to let the game drift away in the middle-overs by not picking up wickets. However, its three-match winning streak since, which includes a record 309-run win over Netherlands, has seen Australia bundle out oppositions with ease.

“We could try and be really safe through the middle, but we’re not going to take wickets where they’re probably going to score runs at the back end. So, we’re always all about wickets at the start and the middle, and happy to give up a few runs in search of that,” Cummins explained.

The captain also lauded his bowling partner Mitchell Starc, who has never gone wicketless in 23 World Cup matches since 2015, for his ability to bowl across phases and maintaining his pace over the years.

Cummins was involved in a very different partnership against the Netherlands — a 103-run alliance off 44 balls with Glenn Maxwell, who blitzed a record 40-ball century.

Calling him a superstar, Cummins, whose contribution in that stand was eight, said, “He said to me with three or four overs left, ‘I just want to face many balls here and own these last four overs.’ And he did it. So yeah, just insane.”

New Zealand skipper Tom Latham also said that the ‘Australia that we know’ had arrived and that teams would take them lightly from here on at their own peril.

Prep time: Australia’s Green at a practice session on the eve of the game against Sri Lanka. 
| Photo Credit: SANDEEP SAXENA

After facing its heaviest World Cup defeat on Thursday against South Africa, Australia captain Pat Cummins said the mood in the camp was fantastic and that the team was treating every game as a final, starting from Monday against Sri Lanka.

“Everyone after the last game was a little bit flat, but the last couple of days have been really good… The mood in the camp has been fantastic,” he said on match eve. “Every game now becomes almost like a final. You’ve got to win just about all of them,” he added.

Interestingly, the only two games the Aussies lost ahead of the semifinals at the World Cup in 2019 were against India and South Africa, the same two sides they have tasted defeat against in their first two games in 2023. “Looking back at 2019, India and South Africa were the two teams that we lost to in the round games there.

“I think in the last year, they’re kind of the two teams that we’ve had the most trouble against.

“So, the opportunity now is we’ve got some teams we haven’t played for a while that we’ve had a lot of success against,” Cummins said.