Pat Cummins ‘disappointed’ after huge loss in opening Perth Test against India

Australian skipper Pat Cummins shared his disappointment after his team’s ignominious loss of 295 runs in the opening Test against India at Perth on Monday. India became the first visiting team to register a win at the Optus Stadium, Perth after they came up with a dominant performance.

After skittling out India at 150 in the first innings, Australia could do much right in the opening Test of the series. The home team was bundled out for a paltry score of 104 runs in the first innings and it was always going to be a herculean task for them to bounce back into the game after KL Rahul and Yashasvi Jaiswal added 201 runs for the opening stand in the second essay.

Australia was skittled out for 238 runs in the second essay after they were set a gargantuan target of 534 runs. Travis Head top-scored with 89 whereas Mitchell Marsh and Alex Carey scored 47 and 36 runs respectively but none of the other Australian batters could show much resistance in the middle.

Pat Cummins said in the post-match presentation while speaking to the broadcasters, “Fairly disappointing. We thought our prep leading into it was good. Everyone was firing. It’s just one of those games.. not much went right. It is what it is. After a loss you want to get back on the horse pretty quickly. But we’ll take a couple of days rest and get into Adelaide.”

He added, “We didn’t give ourselves a chance – a few different facets. Late on Day 1, if we had got through that period, things would’ve been different on Day 2. There’s a lot of experience there (in the batting). This summer it’s a sample size of one. There will be plenty of conversations, plenty of time in the nets. Conversations around what we could’ve done differently.”

The second Test match between Australia and India, which will be a pink-ball game, will be played at Adelaide Oval from December 6 onwards.