Is Pat Cummins the greatest cricketer and captain of the modern era?

The Australian all-rounder has lifted every major trophy in the game despite losing a significant part of his career to injury

When does a player go from being good to great? There are various subjective parameters that are used to anoint a player as great, but a few objective ones as well.

One such criteria is whether the player has achieved pretty much everything that can be accomplished. In modern cricket and its fractured landscape that cuts across three formats and its offshoots, there are very few common threads that connect the realms. Those who manage to tie it all together are champions in the truest sense. Like Pat Cummins.

The Australian all-rounder and captain has done what only a couple of players in modern cricket have managed to do – win everything there is to win.

Up until recently, India great Mahendra Singh Dhoni was heralded as the only captain who had won every single major trophy in top-grade cricket. Now Cummins, too, can be considered the undisputed champion of cricket.

Let’s take a look at his trophy cabinet. There is the 2015 ODI World Cup and 2021 T20 World Cup title as a player. The World Test Championship in 2023 as captain, followed by the pièce-de-la-resistance – the ODI World Cup title after defeating India in their backyard.

In between, he led the way as Australia won and then retained the Ashes for four consecutive series starting from 2017. And now, he has done what no Aussie skipper had managed to do in a decade – defeat India in a Test series. With the series win over India, which was completed in style in Sydney last Sunday, Australia now hold the trophy for every single bilateral Test series they take part in.

This is unprecedented success across the board and, unlike Dhoni, Cummins can proudly call himself an all-format specialist with a particular emphasis on Test cricket.

Cummins played a particularly significant role in his team’s two latest major successes. In the ODI World Cup in India, the Aussies were staring at the possibility of an early exit from the tournament when their top order got blown away by Afghanistan in Mumbai. Chasing 292, the Aussies were down in the dumps at 91-7, with Glenn Maxwell batting alongside Cummins, the last recognised batsman.

Australia needed one of the players to hold one end up and allow the other to play freely. Cummins did that, blocking 68 balls for just 12 runs as Maxwell played the greatest innings in World Cup, and possibly ODI, history as he smashed 201 not out from just 128 balls, battling extreme cramps and playing wild sweeps and scoops off just one working leg. Australia won, miraculously, and soon found themselves in the final.

There, they faced an India team that brought together the most in-form and high-calibre playing XI in white-ball cricket in modern history. The World Cup trophy was practically theirs for the taking.

But Cummins had other plans. On an Ahmedabad wicket that was particularly dry, ostensibly to aid India, Cummins took the brave call of bowling first against a red-hot Indian batting line up.

With a clever use of slower bouncers and off cutters by all their frontline pacers, Australia strangled India’s batting, with Cummins landing the decisive blow by castling Virat Kohli with a cutter. India scored a below-par 240, and the job was completed by a belligerent ton from Travis Head – another constant in Australia’s major successes in recent times.

Cummins had more tricks up his sleeve. In the recently concluded Border-Gavaskar Trophy, Australia got stunned by a rampant Jasprit Bumrah in the first Test in Perth. But they did not panic.

They were admittedly helped by the forced return of Rohit Sharma as India captain. Rohit’s poor form with bat and as a leader, along with that of Kohli, greatly impeded India’s progress, while Cummins plotted his team’s comeback and eventual conquest.

The series was tied 1-1 heading into the fourth Test in Melbourne, where Cummins did it all across both innings, scoring a crucial 90 runs and picking up six wickets in the match to conjure a result out of a game that was headed towards a draw. By the time the last Test in Sydney came around, Australia and Cummins had rattled India and broken down pace ace Bumrah enough to have him injured for the final innings. Australia won the Test and took the series 3-1.

The story is similar in The Ashes. The Aussies have won or drawn the last four Ashes series home and away. Cummins has been the leading wicket- taker in three of the last four Ashes. That is sustained excellence in five-match Test series in England and Australia for more than seven years as a top-tier fast bowler and reliable lower-order batsman.

And Cummins is only 31. Fans tend to forget that he made his Test debut against South Africa at the age of 18 in 2011. Australia did not select teenagers for Tests back then. He was that special.

But Cummins suffered a serious back injury that kept him out of cricket until 2015 and Tests for two more years. So in all, Cummins lost close to six years of his best years as a fast bowler.

He returned to his top form in all formats from 2017 onwards, and has not missed a step since; the credit for which must also go to Australia who waited five years for one player.

At this stage of his career, Cummins has won it all, cemented his status arguably the most successful cricketer of the 21st century and also bagged a record contract in the IPL.

It's a shame he is not spoken about in the same breath as Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting. Still, Cummins could retire tomorrow and rest assured that no other player or captain will come close to his record.