Ashes analysis: Australia and Pat Cummins get things wrong as England and Ben Stokes come up short at Lord's

There have been aspiring cricketers all around the world wanting to grow up and be just like Pat Cummins. Children who idolise the Australian for his skill with the ball, the raw pace that saw him win his Baggy Green aged just 18, his good looks and an apparently warm and charming character that seemed to make him different from the rest. I wanted to be Pat Cummins. But not anymore.

To sum up what Cummins has achieved as a cricketer is a hard thing to do. When he was three years old, he lost a centimetre of what would become his bowling finger following an accident at home, and having burst onto the scene with a Man of the Match performance on his Test debut at the Wanderers in 2011, his ride to greatness was halted by a seemingly neverending spate of injuries, chiefly a run of stress fractures. It appeared for a while that Cummins might never fulfil what for so long had appeared his destiny.

But here we are, nearly 12 years later. Cummins is captain of Australia, on the cusp of leading his side to a famous Ashes victory, what would be the first by a visiting Australian side in England since 2001. Since that debut he's taken 229 Test wickets across 52 matches at an average of just 22.01, and Cummins is undoubtedly one of the great bowlers of his generation. By the time he finishes, that might be of any generation.

He might not be quite as frighteningly quick as he once was, nor his outswinger quite so pronounced, but he is still capable of hitting 90mph and has the ability to seam the ball both ways with no discernible change in his release. His accuracy is exceptional, his stamina barely believable.

Away from the field, Cummins has a squeaky-clean image. A married man with a young child, Cummins has long appeared to possess something very rare in a modern sportsman: awareness. In 2021, Cummins announced that he would become a UNICEF Ambassador for Australia and he has refused to take a backward step when it comes to his views on climate change and improving cricket’s carbon footprint – even when that has put him at loggerheads with Cricket Australia and its sponsors.

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Cummins has always had something about him. An understanding that there is a world outside cricket, a world that isn’t always pretty and nice, and that has big problems which need big sports stars to speak up about in order to force change. As such, when Cummins took over from disgraced former Australia captain Tim Paine before the last Ashes series in 2021-2022, there was a real belief that things might be different.

Paine had replaced Steve Smith in the top job in 2018 after the Newlands ball-tampering scandal, the latter forced to resign in his own disgrace after his players were found to have used sandpaper to tamper with the ball in a Test match. Paine immediately sought to repair the damaged reputation of the Australian cricket team and for a while it was working, only for his sexting scandal a few years later to bring yet more disgrace upon the team.

In Cummins, Australia were taking a big risk in asking the best bowler in the world to take on the burden of captaincy, but were doing so in the belief they were handing over the reins to a man with no black marks against his name, no skeletons in the closet, and someone who was vocal about changing the image of the Australian team and the culture inside the dressing room.

Justin Langer, head coach at the time, was soon forced out because of his intense coaching style and ingrained belief that Australian cricket teams must play hard and win at all costs, that they weren’t in the business of making friends. Cummins didn’t see it that way and frankly, that was a relief to those of us who had grown tired of watching the likes of David Warner snap and snarl his way around a cricket field like he was about to step in the ring with Floyd Mayweather. Go ahead, Davy, be our guest.

In fact, the strangest part of the Jonny Bairstow dismissal on Sunday was the sight of England captain Ben Stokes walking towards the umpires to ask for confirmation as to whether the over had been called or not before the stumps were broken. It was at this point that the utterly abominable Travis Head started pointing and gesturing at Bairstow, even touching his arm in his best macho-man impression. When Stokes stepped into the space, Head’s demeanour quickly changed, hands suddenly returned to his pockets and shoulders hunched down in his best attempt at playing Mr Nice Guy.

We’ve all seen the footage, Travis, and we ain’t buying it. It was very much like a sad scene from a secondary school playground. Bully tries to intimidate lone victim, before big brother or friend comes around the corner to straighten things out. Bully retreats under the guise of a misunderstanding. Pathetic and weak.

But what of Cummins? Surely he’s better than that, right? It was pleasing to see him and Stokes sharing a few words after the match, for all they clearly disagree on the merits of the dismissal. For what it’s worth, I think Cummins was put in an incredibly tough position and I have sympathy for him, given he had very little time to react and might not have even been given the chance to withdraw the appeal.

Bairstow was clearly culpable here. It was a shocking piece of cricket from an experienced campaigner who has played 92 Test matches for his country. It was naive, it was dozy, and he paid the ultimate price. I do hope he apologised to his teammates after the match.

Cummins had to factor all of this in and when weighing up his options perhaps felt it tipped the scales in favour of upholding the decision. But listening to his comments after the match it seemed that in his own mind, there was never a decision to make, no grey area to consider, no acknowledgment that this wasn’t a good look for Test cricket on its biggest stage.

Remarkably, at the time there was no awareness from someone who has always seemed so aware.

"I thought it was totally fair play. That’s how the rule is – I know some people might disagree a lot," Cummins quipped afterwards as Michael Atherton asked the questions at the post-match presentation. Talk about not reading the room.

By now the decision had been made, the course of the match decided. While you or I might have retracted the appeal out in the middle, we are not the ones captaining our country in an Ashes series. However, the very least Cummins could have done is accepted it wasn’t a great look for the game, acknowledged that the ugly scenes that followed were born out of his and his team's decisions, and offered some sympathy to Bairstow, to Stokes, and to England for winning the game that way.

It has been pointed out to me on social media that overthrows helped England win the World Cup final on this very ground in 2019, after a throw from a New Zealand fielder ricocheted off Stokes’ bat and ran away to the boundary. But in that moment, Stokes wasn’t laughing. He looked gutted and he immediately raised his arms in apology.

There are ways to behave and Cummins and his team got it badly wrong yesterday, irrespective of Alex Carey’s stumping. It’s what came after that rankles. Why did Head feel the need to play the big man when he’s so clearly not. Why, after Usman Khawaja was involved in a verbal altercation in the Lord’s Long Room, did Warner feel the need to then jump in, even though he had nothing to do with the incident and Khawaja had by then been moved on by security? And why did Cummins smirk when Atherton asked him questions about such a controversial moment?

When Mitchell Starc’s catch of Ben Duckett on the fourth evening was ruled not out by the third umpire, the Australians were in no mood to live by the old adage that the umpire’s decision is final. To his credit, Duckett had taken Starc’s word and was headed off the field before the umpires called him back, but even after the decision had been made Starc was still shouting and screaming at a clearly flabbergasted and completely innocent Duckett.

It's not even about the stumping, or the appeal, or the lack of a withdrawal of that appeal. It’s about what came after. This was an ugly moment for Test cricket. Yes, it raised the profile of the series in the short term, but the damage dismissals like that and the incidents that followed could do to the game is much greater.

I have a young daughter and another on the way and I dearly want them both to play and enjoy cricket one day. But I don’t want them to play the game like that, to behave like Australia did at Lord’s. I wince at the thought of children around the world watching yesterday’s play and taking that away from what was otherwise a thrilling contest.

What an awful example to set to the next generation and Cummins must bear responsibility for that. As captain of Australia, the best cricket team in the world, Cummins and his players are custodians of this great game with a duty to leave it in a better place than they found it. They are here to win, of course, but they are also here to entertain, to teach and to inspire those that follow them.

That is what Cummins promised when he became captain, but his words have proven to be empty. I wonder how he'll reflect on the events of Sunday, whether he'll strike a similar tone in Leeds or now view things through a different lens having had chance to let the dust settle. I wonder whether this is the captain he truly wants to be, and how he wants to be remembered.

For all his theatrics, Stuart Broad was right – this is what Carey will be remembered for, and it might will define Cummins’ legacy as captain. I don’t want to be Cummins anymore, I don’t want my daughters to be the next Cummins, nor the boys and girls at my local club who will have been watching with excitement on Sunday.

No, I’d much rather the next generation play the game like Stokes – attacking and brave, bold and adventurous. Winning and losing with grace and humility. I don’t want them to be like Cummins, and that’s the saddest part of all.

More Ashes content:

• Third Test preview
• Ashes guide to the grounds: Headingley
• Watch: Cricket Only Bettor podcast
• Paul Krishnamurty's In-play betting masterclass

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