Adelaide Strikers coach Jason Gillespie doubted the Australian cricketer team captain Pat Cummins is worth a $3.67 million Indian Premier League (IPL) deal, saying the bid “massive overs”.
Despite Cummins having taken 55 wickets at 24.54 in the 2021 T20 World Cup, Gillespie criticised his T20 performance as worth the contract value.
Cummins led Australia as a winning team in the World Cup last month and was signed by Sunrise Hyderabad for IN₹20.5 crore in the Tuesday evening auction on December 19, 2023. After his absences in IPL this year, he returned to the auction and became the focus of a fierce bidding war.
The Royal Challengers Bangalore, where Virat Kohli and Glenn Maxwell play, also bid for Cummins, followed by the Chennai Super Kings and the Mumbai Indians before Hyderabad raised their bid.
The 30-year-old player will earn around $262,000 (PK₹72.7 million) per match if he plays in all 14 group-stage matches for Hyderabad. As a comparison, Cummins earns about $15,000 (PK₹4.1 million) in match payments for a five-day Test.
Cummins will also team up with World Cup hero Travis Head, who was signed by Hyderabad for $1.22 million (PK₹338.5 million). His payments dominated Head’s successful return to the IPL after six years.
The right-armer player held the most expensive IPL bid record for 90 minutes before Kolkata Knight Riders made a $4.43 million (PK₹368.2 million) deal to sign Mitchell Starc. Both bids surpassed the benchmark for Australian players at $3.15 million (PK₹261.8 million), which was paid for Cameron Green last year.
Cummins sets IPL 2024 as T20 World Cup preparation
Cummins is passionate about using IPL 2024 as a platform to prepare for the T20 World Cup in the US and the West Indies in June 2024. He assessed the IPL as a huge opportunity to showcase his T20 skills, targeting to be a strong candidate for the Australian T20 World Cup member squad.
“I feel like I haven’t played a heap of T20 cricket, and in some ways, I feel like I have not played my best T20 cricket for a while,” Cummins said.
The player also expressed his excitement to join IPL 2024 after he missed out on IPL 2023 and the 2023 T20 World Cup due to a heavy international workload.
Cummins won the 2021 T20 World Cup and was classified as an all-rounder in the 2024 IPL auction. He also represented Kolkata Knight Riders in IPL 2022, setting a new record for the fastest men’s T20 half-century from just 14 balls.
Cummins could be the best Australian cricketer
Cummins took three consecutive five-wicket haul in Australia’s third and final Test series against Pakistan at Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) on January 4, making him the first Australian bowler in more than five years since Nathan Lyon.
The player also has the fourth-best average of any bowler in Australia in Test history with at least 100 wickets, putting him behind England’s Jim Laker and South Africans’ Vernon Philander and Kagiso Rabada.
Former England captain Michael Vaughn stated Cummins could become the best Australian cricketer after Don Bradman. Vaughn assumed with the player being just 30 currently, he has at least five to seven years more to play and will be behind Bradman.
Between Cummins’ impressive performances on the cricket ground, and also the anticipation of IPL 2024 and T20 World Cup, cricket fans can explore the Simulated Reality League (SRL). It is a cricket match simulation that provides an immersive experience. For instance, Premier League SRL is always available although the real cricket is off-season.
SRL Cricket uses cutting-edge technology to collect hundreds of data from major cricket matches, including statistics, player transfers, loans, and drafts. Later, the artificial intelligence (AI) will process the generated data into graphics and a computer simulation of IPL matches.
