Ashes 2025: Pat Cummins To Return For 3rd Test Against England? Aussie Skipper Says 'Body Feels...'

Ashes 2025-26, AUS vs ENG Tests: Pat Cummins could be making his return to the Australian team for the third Ashes Test against England. Australia have played the first two games of the five-match series without their senior pacer and skipper Cummins, who continues to recover from his injury. In Steve Smith's captaincy, Australia won the first Test in Perth and have taken an upper hand in the second in Brisbane.

While the action is on in the pink-ball Test at The Gabba, Cummins expressed his confidence about returning for the third Test, which is scheduled to start from December 17 in Adelaide. After missing out on the first two games in the Ashes due to his back issue, Cummins was spotted bowling at the nets.

"First of all, yeah, I should be right for Adelaide. "So, I'll have one more bowl tomorrow (Sunday), and then we'll go to Adelaide and have another bowl there. So, barring any hiccups, I'll be good to go. Body feels great." Cummins said to Fox Cricket.

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Cummins also mentioned how close he was to playing in the second Ashes Test in Brisbane. The pacer replied, "Relatively close, really."

Cummins continued and said, "Body feels great, I'm bowling at 100 per cent. The big question mark when coming back from a bone injury is that we tend to have a bowl and have a couple of days off, recover, bowl, bowl. I haven't done back-to-back bowls, so one of the high-risk things going into a Test match is you're going to be expected to bowl two days in a row, maybe three days in a row, and potentially quite a few overs."

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The decision to keep Cummins out was taken as a precautionary measure, considering that rushing him for the third Test was too risky. "So, we felt that (not doing back-to-back bowls yet) was too risky; we started to kind of game plan (for reduced overs) -- could we try and maybe bowl 20 overs, 25 overs with 'Greeny' in the side as an all-rounder?" Cummins continued.

"We feel like we've got lots of bowling. So, we really tried to map out a way where I could play, but it just felt a little bit too cute in the end. And it didn't really feel fair on the other bowlers, or even on myself as a captain. If I had to have a bowler that I was bowling and trying to work out which overs, it didn't quite feel right. It didn't feel like the right Test match to take that risk," the Australian captain said.

In Cummins' absence, Mitchell Starc has led the Aussie pace attack brilliantly and already has taken 16 wickets in the series. He produced a match-winning effort of 7/58 and 3/55 helped Australia won the series opener before the veteran picked six wickets in the first innings of the day-night Test in Brisbane.