Courtesy: BCCI/IPL
Pat Cummins, the Australian captain, who missed out on playing the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 due to a persistent ankle injury, has expressed his intention to play in the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 season. After leading Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) to the final of the 2024 edition of the tournament, which they lost in a one-sided contest against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), there were reports of him potentially skipping the IPL this year to fully recover from injury, but it isn’t apparently true.
Notably, following a 3-1 win over India in the five-match Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) 2024-25 series under Pat Cummins’ captaincy last month, the Australian fast bowler skipped the tour to Sri Lanka and ICC Champions Trophy 2025, to give himself enough time to fully recover from the ankle injury. As per his latest interview with cricket.com.au, Pat Cummins stated that his “ankle is starting to come good”, which is a positive sign to what’s ahead.
The 31-year-old also remarked that his injury was touch and go in regards to making it to the Champions Trophy this February, but he needed more rest, which meant that he had to miss out on the tournament in Pakistan and the UAE. Pat Cummins was quoted as saying, as per Times of India, “It's a funny one –- it's not like a hamstring where you need six weeks (to recover). It's one of those ones where it really just needs a bit (more) rest to settle down. So we just ran out of time for Pakistan.”
Physically IPL is quite a nice build-up for the World Test Championship final: Pat Cummins
After stating that the current break would help him stay in great shape for the rest of the year, Pat Cummins pointed out that the upcoming season of the IPL over the next couple of months will allow him to prepare well for the World Test Championship (WTC) final in June. He remarked, “Physically it's quite a nice build-up for the World Test Championship final, and then the Test matches after that. That's the aim at this stage; start bowling over the next week or so, building up, and should be right for IPL.”
The WTC final between Australia and South Africa is set to begin on June 11 at the Lord’s in London a couple of weeks after the IPL’s conclusion, which is slated to start on March 22.
