Pat Cummins joined an elite club of Australians to reach 300 Test wickets on day two of the ICC World Test Championship 2025 Final and has his sights set on many more.
The Australian captain arrived at Lord’s six short of the landmark and reached it in South Africa’s first innings courtesy of a devastating spell of quick bowling.
The 32-year-old finished with six for 28, four of which came in a quickfire burst after lunch, to help his side establish a 74-run lead which they stretched to 218 by the close with two wickets remaining.
He is the eighth of his countrymen to join the 300 club, no mean feat for any bowler but particularly one who he had to wait more than five years for his second Test appearance after a spate of injuries following his debut aged 18.
And though Cummins’ eyes are on a bigger prize at the Home of Cricket this week, he was delighted to bring up his personal milestone.
“It’s really cool, especially knowing there are not too many on that list,” he said.
“Being a fast bowler, 300 is something I always thought about as a pretty good sign of durability, resilience and longevity. I feel pretty proud to join that group.
“I have had a really good run in the last half a dozen years of not missing many games. In the first few years, I didn’t know where my second Test was coming from but now I feel like I have a lot of miles in the legs.
“Gaz (Nathan Lyon) is up past 500, back in the day 300 felt like you were close to the end but Starcy (Mitchell Starc) is almost at 400 as well.
“I don’t feel like I’m going to end any time soon. I need to thank the medical staff, the way they looked after me in those early years and the way they manage the fast bowlers, a lot of it is a nod to them.”
Cummins is not the only world-class fast bowler on display at Lord’s this week, however, and South Africa’s seamers combined to make life tough for Australia in their second innings.
When their skipper was clean bowled by Lungi Ngidi, his side were sat on a precarious 73 for seven and in need of a partnership – which arrived courtesy of Alex Carey and Mitchell Starc, who added 61 crucial runs.
Carey fell shortly before the close for 43 having helped take the lead past 200, the latest in a string of invaluable knocks from a wicketkeeper cherished by his captain.
“It feels like number five, six and seven can be the toughest places to bat,” he said.
“Travis Head and Beau (Webster) have played crucial knocks lately and Carey has been fantastic as well.
“He bats brilliantly with the tail, leading those partnerships, and he puts the pressure back on the opposition when it seems like they are on top. He was brilliant today.”
South Africa will have to make the highest score of the match if they are to come out on top, a particularly tough ask if Cummins and his fellow pacemen Starc and Josh Hazlewood are on song.
Cummins felt a change in momentum towards his side over the final hour and hopes to carry that into day three.
“If we can get another 20 or 30 in the morning, it would give us a few more options to bowl, a few more aggressive fields and those kind of things,” he said.
“We’ll see how we go but we’re happy for it (the lead) to be over 200. The mood in the changing room was pretty positive towards the end there, it was a great partnership of 50-odd and it felt like a run chase.
“Every boundary was getting a lot of claps and a lot of noise, especially from Marnus (Labuschagne), he’s always pretty noisy. It was a pretty good way to end the day.”
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Napoleonic Haze
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