Cricket World Player of the Week - Pat Cummins

Nominating Travis Head, the Player of the World Cup Final, as the Cricket World Player of the Week would have been as easy choice, but it was captain Pat Cummins who proved instrumental to Australia's World Cup winning campaign.

Australia were under tremendous pressure after losing their first two matches of the recently-concluded ICC Cricket World Cup 2023. A couple of more defeats, and it would have been all over for the mighty Aussies.

Their arch rivals England were already dwelling at the bottom of the leaderboard, and with the likes of Afghanistan punching much above their weight, the World Cup dynamics seemed unpredictable at the midpoint of the competition.

However, the Pat Cummins-led Australian side turned their campaign around and did not lose a single game from then on, including the semi-final and the final. They not only picked themselves up when it came to their body language and application, but their tactics were also on-point from then on.

Cummins not only starred with the ball on the day of the Final, restricting the mighty batting line-up of India to just 240, on the back of enviable bowling figures of 10-0-34-2 but his decision to bowl first at the toss also proved to be a masterstroke.

Although not many can argue that Travis Head's sensational knock of 137 off 120 balls on the biggest stage of the World Cup final was right up there, restricting India to a meagre 240 was already more than half the job done.

Cummins had many detractors, both in India and around the world, when he was appointed the captain, but by winning both the World Test Championship mace and the World Cup trophy in a short span, he has certainly answered his critics in kind.

They were the decisions that got tongues wagging but here are the five bold calls that paid off to deliver Australia an against-the-odds triumph! #CWC23 https://t.co/G11dByigf2

— cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) November 20, 2023

© Cricket World 2023

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