A victory in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 final for Sunrisers Hyderabad over Kolkata Knight Riders will add another feather to Pat Cummins’ cap of leadership glory in the last 12 months. Cummins has taken Australia to the World Test Championship and ODI World Cup triumphs last year, and an IPL 2024 trophy will continue his good run as a leader. Apart from being a leader who leads by example, Cummins has been someone who is known to use data a lot and mix it with his gut feeling.

But Cummins feels data is just a factor in facilitating the on-field planning and decision-making process.

“I think data and analytics are there as a tool to use, but it’s just one factor in a decision-making process. We play a lot of T20 games, but the two games are not exactly the same. It’s different wickets and opposition. So, data only takes you so far.”

“So, I think there’s still a strong place for kind of gut feel and intuition. Data doesn’t tell you that it’s probably going to be successful. So, you need to balance between the objective data that you gather and what you are feeling out there,” he said in the pre-final press conference.

Cummins also thinks his Midas touch as a leader may come to an end in future, considering he never captained a T20 team before and had a middling run in the format.

“It would be great (winning the title) but the run’s going to stop at some point. It’s been a great couple of years, but I haven’t captained any T20 cricket team before this series. So, I’m not too sure what to expect. It’s quite fast-paced,” he said.

SRH were placed at the bottom of the points table last year and now are on the verge of completing a stunning run to potentially winning the championship. Cummins credited a nice mix of experienced and young players in the SRH setup clicking together to make the side a fearsome unit.

“It’s been huge. We have quite an experienced bowling line-up, including (Jaydev) Unadkat and Bhuvi (Bhuvneshwar Kumar). Also, so many youngsters have come through and have won us games by themselves, like Nitish (Reddy) and Abhishek (Sharma). We also have guys who have been away from the Indian setup, but they have been fantastic. So, that’s been the story of our team.”

Cummins signed off by emphasizing on ignoring the outside noise ahead of Sunday’s title clash. “There’s so much pressure from obviously the number of fans that are watching, media, journalists, but also from their own teams back home or their own coaches and everything as well. So, you try and strip that all away.”

“When they all start, the youngsters always play with a lot of freedom, so you just want to keep encouraging that and giving them the freedom to play however they want. If it doesn’t work out, you’re kind of there to help them work through that rather than trying to scold them or tell them to change.”