McDonald confirms Cummins won’t play for the rest of Ashes series

Australia coach Andrew McDonald has confirmed that Pat Cummins won’t play a further part in the Ashes.

Cummins returned from a back stress injury for the third Test victory in Adelaide, where he was instrumental, taking 3/69 in the first innings and 3/48 in the second.

While McDonald confirmed that Cummins pulled up fine from the latest match, Cricket Australia are going to take a conservative approach with their captain, given they’ve now one the series.

“He's pulled up fine, but he won't play any part in the rest of the series,” McDonald said at a press conference.

“That was a discussion that we had a long time ago about his return. 

“We were taking on some risk, and people who reported on that would understand the risk associated with that rebuild.

“But we've now won the series, and that was the goal, so to position him for further risk and jeopardise him long-term is not something that we want to do, and Pat’s really comfortable with that.

“If he had any setback in the build-up as well, we would have shut him down straight away. 

“Everything went really smoothly, and full credit to him and the medical team to navigate through that risk profile to get him back and take 6 wickets in that game and nail the Ashes series.

“It was incredibly pleasing for everyone associated with that.”

With Cummins now out for the rest of the Test summer, his next assignment for Australia could be the T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka in February.

At this stage, McDonald is hopeful but not certain that Cummins will feature in that tournament.

“That'll be an assessment,” McDonald said.

“I'm assuming he’ll have a check-in scan at some point and gather more information around where his back is at.

“I can't really say. It’s quite grey at the moment, we're hopeful.”

Cummins was replaced in the squad for the Boxing Day Test by Jhye Richardson. Check out the full squad here.