Hyderabad: The great Jimmy Anderson is poetry in motion when he bowls. His fluidity of movement while running towards the crease, the flowingness of hands and feet, and the zippiness with which he bowls is the stuff of folklore. Not many in the world of sport possess the art Anderson has.
Contrarily, Pat Cummins is brute, fast and can blow away oppositions single-handedly on his day. His thrilling cameos and enthralling exhibition of endurance can be a treat to watch for the lovers of the game.
- " class="align-text-top noRightClick twitterSection" data="">
And if numbers are anything to go by, Cummins' 164 wickets in 34 Test matches is already a legend in the making. With 632 wickets in 166 matches, Anderson has achieved almost everything a cricketer can.
Come 8th December, both the cricketers will leave nothing in the tank to make their team win as Australia and England face off in one of cricket's biggest spectacles -- The Ashes.
But Anderson holding Kookaburra cricket ball is a completely different proposition and former cricketer-turned-commentator Laxman Sivaramakrishnan believes Cummins may lag behind when these two giants of the game compete as he will have an additional responsibility of captaining the side.
"It will be a good contest between the two. I think Jimmy Anderson will be more than a handful because Australia in the recent past haven't had top-class openers. If Anderson strikes early, there is a big chance for him to be able to perform better than Cummins. Pat will also have the additional pressure of being the captain and the bowler of the team. I will pick Jimmy Anderson to pick a lot more wickets than Cummins," Sivaramakrishnan told Etv Bharat.
Sivaramakrishnan is also banking on Anderson's experience to come good against the Aussie batters who have struggled in the recent past and lost their long-standing authority at The Gabba after Rishabh Pant and Shubman Gill went all guns blazing and blew their bowling attack.
On being asked if Kookaburra ball will make any difference, Sivaramakrishnan, who has played nine Test and 16 ODIs for India, said, "Anderson bowl a lot with the dukes ball whereas when it comes to Australia, he will be using Kookaburra ball. Anderson must be around 38-years-old (39) and he has been around for a long time. If I remember well, he bowled really well in Chennai when England had come down to India. Jimmy Anderson is a kind of a person who can adapt because of his experience but Pat Cummins is also a strike bowler."
Sivaramakrishnan is part of the Tamil Commentary Panel for the upcoming Ashes Tour on SONY TEN 4 from 8th December 2021 to 18th January 2022.
He reasoned that Cummins might face difficulty swaying between the two roles of bowling and captaincy.
"Being a bowler, it's not easy for Cummins because he will not only have to manage himself but the other bowlers."
Currently ranked world number one, Pat Cummins was selected as Australia's captain after Tim Paine made himself unavailable citing "mental health break" in the wake of his text message scandal.
"He's got a lot of work to do. Generally, if the batters does the captaincy, it's a lot easier for the bowlers.
"This particular Australian team under Pat Cummins, how they are going to prove themselves and if they get the Ashes, is a big, big mystery, and we'll have to wait and see," he concluded.
Ayushmaan Pandey
