"Can't just go from no bowling to bowling" -Australia captain Pat Cummins gives massive update about his fitness ahead of the Ashes 2025-26

Pat Cummins was diagnosed with a stress reaction in his lower back after West indies tests.

Australian captain Pat Cummins gave a massive update on his fitness and stated that he is in danger of missing the Ashes 2025-26 series against England as he battles to recover from his back injury.

Cummins, 32, is not playing Australia’s current T20I series in New Zealand due to bone stress in his lower back. Early in his career, the fast bowler sustained numerous ailments.

After the tour of the West Indies, examinations showed that Cummins was suffering from a bone stress in his lower back, and he is now rushing to be fit for a huge Ashes series. As captain, the 32-year-old has demonstrated incredible endurance by participating in nearly every test since rejoining the team in 2017 following years of battling stress fractures.

“Can’t just go from no bowling to bowling tomorrow”—Pat Cummins on his recovery

As Australia finalizes its roster in preparation for hosting England at Optus Stadium on November 21 for the eagerly awaited series, his participation in the Ashes has been called into question.

Cummins said that since he is now limited to working out at the gym, taking walks, and doing “some cycling,” he could need up to three more scans to ascertain his participation in the first test.

“We’ll probably use one or two, maybe even three, scans to kind of gauge how the back’s tracking. But like a lot of injuries, you have clinical signs of how you’re feeling—symptoms. You just want to make sure everything’s as we expect. That’ll be pretty important, but like anything, there are always multiple factors. We’ve got a bit of time. Obviously, you can’t just go from no bowling to bowling tomorrow, so there’ll be a ramping-up period as well, where you’re always tracking along with the physios,” Cummins told news.com.au.

In case Cummins misses out, Scott Boland will be included in the Australia pace attack featuring Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood, along with Nathan Lyon’s spin. Steve Smith might be handed the captaincy in Cummins’ absence.

“There’s not much you can do to speed it up, unfortunately. There’s some marginal science that we don’t really want to go near, but it’s just rest and trying to avoid anything that’s going to get in the way of healing, knowing that we’ve got time to ramp up and get bowling. I’m still doing gym work, pretty much unrestricted, and some cycling sessions. The priority at the moment is resting my back. Then once we ramp up, we ramp up,” he stated.

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