SCG declaration decision simple for Pat Cummins

Team needs should come before individual ambitions

I can’t believe there is even a debate about this.

As Sydney rain washed away the third day of the third Test, the biggest conversation topic revolved around whether Pat Cummins would declare overnight at 4-475 or give Usman Khawaja (195 not out) the chance to reach a maiden double century.

Are the commentators, observers and other gullible media serious?

Should Australia try to win the Test match that would guarantee their appearance in the first World Test Championship final or would it be better to give an individual player the chance to attain a nice but barely earth-shattering personal milestone?

There are only 196 overs left in the Test to claim 20 South African wickets but some smart cricket people suggested Cummins should invest some of them – one? five? 10? – for Khawaja’s glory.

If Cummins needs to take a hint from history, he should consider Mark Taylor’s example in 1998.

Taylor was 334 not out overnight against Pakistan in Peshawar – thereby equalling Don Bradman’s landmark score that had stood as Australia’s best for nearly 60 years – but opted to declare in a bid to win the match.

Taylor was often lauded for not breaking Bradman’s record but invariably shrugged off the praise and said the team always came before the individual.

Maybe like Sid Barnes, who threw his wicket away for 234 at the SCG in 1946 because “it wouldn't be right for someone to make more runs than Bradman” who had just got out for the same score, Taylor saw some value in standing alongside rather than above the great batsman.

As an aside, there wasn’t much love lost between Barnes and Bradman.

I once sat next to 1948 Invincible Doug Ring on a flight to Hobart and got a host of insights into his captain.

 One of the most peculiar referred to a county match on that tour when Barnes was hit in the groin and, according to Ring, the usually humourless Bradman found it so amusing that he laughed floods of tears and rolled around on the changeroom floor for an extended period while his team-mate suffered in the middle.

There are another two precedents that should inform Cummins’ decision-making.

In 1995 at the SCG, England captain Mike Atherton pulled the pin on Graeme Hick who was on the verge of a rare century but dawdled so much through the 90s that the declaration came with him still two short of the milestone.

And Paul Reiffel, as Victorian captain before the successful career change that sees him umpiring this Test, declared a Sheffield Shield innings with young batsman Michael Klinger on 99 not out.

Klinger told me in 2015 that he was not affected at the time – he was simply glad to get a score on the board – but spent later years wondering often what impact the controversial decision had on him and others.

Both batsmen might have been disappointed at the timing of their captain’s decision but neither questioned the value of team needs overshadowing individual ambitions.

Neither should Khawaja.

He is in splendid form and enjoying a late-career renaissance that might have more than a few chapters left.

But if he does want grounds for Cummins to extend the innings for another over or two, he might point out that Reiffel lost after his declaration and the Taylor and Atherton calls made little difference to matches that ended in tame draws.