Australia captain Pat Cummins has again said that playing Test cricket for his country was always his priority even as he admitted to yet deciding on his future with the next edition of Indian Premier League (IPL). While Cummins was leading the Sunrisers Hyderabad to the final of IPL 2024, he had been purchased by the franchise at a whopping Rs 20.50 crore, which made him the second-most expensive player in the history of the tournament. Plans ahead for the IPL 2025 season, the mega auction is slated later this year with as much as six player retention for each of the teams, which will be retained from the current setup either through retention process or by exercising the Right to Match (RTM) option.
The run-up to the crucial five-Test Border-Gavaskar Trophy next month has had Cummins only focusing on representing the country. However, the pacer is aware of the new IPL rules for overseas players that make them "ineligible to register in the following year's player auction" if they don't register for that season's player auction while the other rule bans players for two seasons if the player makes himself unavailable before the start of the season after getting picked at the auction.
I'll work out in the next little bit what this season looks like. There's a bit of a tweak in the rules, but I don't know whether that would have affected me in the past, I've never pulled out after the auction. But it is one more factor to consider with the IPL," said Cummins.
Test cricket would be the absolute no.1 priority, world cups would be right up there, and then I think you use them as your tent poles and work out what else makes sense around that.
"The calendar is never going to get any less busy, and I'm not going to get any younger, so these things have always been considerations, and moving forward will become even more so. But playing for Australia, particularly in Test cricket, is my first and most important job," he added.
Cummins expects the upcoming home series against India to be another close-fought contest as the visitors won the last two series in Australia.
"The couple of home series I have played against India-there's always an element of attrition to them. The last series came down to the last session at the Gabba on the last day of the last Test match," he said.
"That's a good thing to keep in mind; it is a long series, and it might be tightly held until the last game, so you've got to manage your resources throughout," the Australia captain added.
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