You would have to call the combination incongruous. In one of the clips doing the digital rounds before the World Test Championship, there was Pat Cummins on Jeremy Clarkson’s farm programme, having apparently just raided the activewear section, the men around him wearing those vests that help rich people believe themselves to be rugged outdoor types. It’s hard to imagine much affinity between the two, sitting presumably at a wooden farmhouse table over Clarkson’s rustic bean soup and a heel of crusty bread, talking their way to a cordial entente about carbon emissions. But there was the Australian captain nonetheless, affably rolling an arm over while a farm type plonked a rubber ball on to a nearby shed, the bowler smiling in that way that suggests a shrug as Clarkson sledged him in a most British fashion.
By the second day of the World Test Championship final, affable Cummins was not in attendance. We’re used to that half smile, half shrug: even after some galling Test losses, Cummins has offered the perspective that the game is a game, that the players tried their best, and that losing is often the price of trying to win. He declines to be drawn into the hype that frames sport as everything. But this time was different, if only by a few degrees. It’s not that there was anger in the performance, but there was something uncharacteristically flinty.
