Test captain Pat Cummins reflected on his team’s 2004 victory in India led by Adam Gilchrist and Ricky Ponting, adding that it serves as a goal for February and March.
The latest behind-the-scenes documentary, Amazon Original’s ‘The Test’ season two, promises to give more than a glimpse into the strategies the Australian cricket team will employ to break its 19-year losing streak in India, which was once called the “Everest” by former coach Justin Langer and the “final frontier” by the great Steve Waugh. Test captain Pat Cummins referred back to the 2004 victory in India led by Adam Gilchrist and Ricky Ponting, noting that it serves as the standard his team aspires to meet in February and March.
Cummins adds in “The Test,” referencing Australia’s subsequent five-Test Ashes tour of the UK, “They won in India, they won in England.”
“The 2004 Test squad had the ability to adjust to new environments quickly. You can’t get any better than that. You hope to someday achieve that.” This week on Prime Video is the launch of a documentary that follows the fortunes of Cummins’ team from the time he was named captain through their Ashes campaign last summer and their subsequent tours of Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Learn more about the current team members on the show.
Cummins explains that keeping the field in with the new ball and making the most of it is a common tactic in Australia.
“The inverse is true on the subcontinent. You put the field out to prevent the new ball from simply pinging off the bat, and then you cross your fingers that it begins to reverse direction.
“When you see an opening, you just go ‘boom.'” The 2016 Australian cricket team’s tour of Sri Lanka is discussed in this documentary, alongside their time in Pakistan.
Usman Khawaja, a veteran opener, spoke on how Australia lost the series 0-3 despite having a good start with the ball in the first Test at Pallekele before being outfoxed by the home team’s spinners.
According to Khawaja’s analysis in “The Test,” “I thought we had the perfect game plan for the first Test and we definitely should have won it.”
“The procedure and our actions were flawless.
“But after that (first) loss, we began to doubt ourselves, and by the third game, we had developed three separate strategies.
And I think we have to have a strong sense that the first plan we have is probably the right one. Senior fast bowler Josh Hazlewood believes that failures in the past can be attributed to an unwillingness to recognize that different situations require different responses.
Hazlewood blames Australia’s perennial failures on subcontinent wickets on the team’s inability to quickly adjust to the local environment.
It’s like, “this is how I play, and this is how I’m going to play,” and it doesn’t fly in Sri Lanka. David Warner, Cameron Green, and other key players share their thoughts in “The Test.”
Former captain Steve Smith, who replaced David Warner after the ball-tampering scandal in South Africa in 2018, said of Langer’s tenure: “He left the squad in a better place than when he started.” Mitchell Marsh, a player of many positions, “Players taking responsibility for their actions was a major turning point in our progress over the past six years.
Time will tell if we are any good.
