LISA STHALEKAR: Pat Cummins under siege from Aussie team’s old guard again after woeful defeat to India

Pat Cummins has faced many issues in his short career as skipper, none more publicly than when Justin Langer was removed as head coach of the Australian side.

At the time it was an “us vs them” mentality with the playing group sticking together against the brigade of past players who openly backed their former teammate, Langer.

You get a sense that the sharks are circling once again around the Australian team after their woeful performance in Perth.

And the same brigade of former players that backed Langer in 2022 are again trying to tell Cummins how to run his team despite it being ranked No.1 in the world.

The skipper has tried to downplay the fierce criticism of the team and the performances of under pressure batters Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith.

For Australia, it was the nature of the loss, the inability to adjust from their blunders from the first innings, that has shocked the Australian cricketing fraternity.

It wasn’t just with the bat, our bowlers struggled to make inroads into the Indian line-up in their second innings as Yashavi Jaiswal and Virat Kohli ran riot.

The 295-run thrashing sparked plenty of questions about the Australians commitment and their camaraderie.

Greg Blewett was the first to fire off, commenting that Australia’s body language in the field on day two was “unacceptable”, as they tried tirelessly to claim a wicket.

I don’t know if these guys remember the times when they were chasing the leather around the field on what felt like a never-ending day.

I remember those days well and it’s hard to stay in the fight when you are getting absolutely walloped.

Then, Adam Gilchrist raised that it might be a “divided change room” after Josh Hazlewood’s comments at the end of play on day three.

When asked by one reporter, “how do you approach tomorrow?” Hazlewood responded, “you probably have to ask one of the batters that question.”

I certainly didn’t read into those remarks that there was a rift between the bowlers and batters.

Should we really expect the number 11 to be thinking about how they are going to chase down this mammoth total with only seven wickets in hand? I don’t think so.

Michael Vaughan went a little deeper stating that he can’t recall seeing this type of behaviour from an Australian side.

I think we can take Vaughan’s comments with a grain of salt as he would be loving seeing Australia in the doldrums with an Ashes series looming next summer Down Under.

I also distinctly remember Steve Smith, then the Australian captain, blaming the bowlers.

In 2016 after they lost by four wickets to the West Indies, “we didn’t bowl in the right areas. We let them off a bit easy in that respect.”

How are Josh’s remarks any worse?

In my day we never had the scrutiny of former players, commentators and journalists nit-picking over everything we did as players do now.

Though in 2009 during our home World Cup, things started to unravel extremely quickly. There was a divide amongst the team, not amongst the players, but instead it was the coaching staff against the playing group.

Whilst that World Cup finish (fourth) would be our worst performance, one thing that was evident was that players had each other’s back.

Within a year, with the same coaching staff, we were able to win our first T20 World Cup in 2010 and it was purely down to us as a group lifting each other up.

Now more than ever Cummins and his men need to stick together to silence the critics and find a way to combat this Indian side.

Cummins stated that before this Test match selectors believed that this was the best eleven players in the country and he can’t imagine in the space of four days that has changed.

He is playing with a straight bat, something that could have been useful at the time when he was batting (sorry couldn’t help myself Pat).

You want a calm leader when in the eye of a storm like this one so we need to back him to lead the team out of this rut.

The good news for the Australians is their record with the pink ball. They have won 11 of the 12 day-night Tests they have played, but the only loss was last year against the West Indies in Brisbane.

Adelaide is a happy hunting ground for Australia so there is no place better for the team to reverse its fortunes.

Will Cummin’s “nothing to see here guys” mantra keep the wolves at bay and allow his team to get things back on track? Only time will tell.