Australia Test and ODI captain Pat Cummins recalled the hardest time of his life when he was traveling to India for a Test series last year, while his mother was undergoing treatment at the same time.
Cummins’ mother Maria passed away from cancer and the cricketer left the India tour midway to be with her as she was in palliative care.
"I knew when I was getting on that plane that I was going to have to come back in a couple of weeks pretty much. Flying away... That's the hardest time of my life, easily. I probably felt it in the 12 months leading in. Any time I flew away I was like, 'Time's finite here, I'm making a deliberate choice to go and play somewhere rather than spend it at home," Cummins said in an interview for the Imperfects podcast.
Cummins said he tried to keep his mother Maria's final days as private as possible and didn't explain to her why he flew home after playing in two Tests in India last year.
"But that time in particular – because we knew roughly the timeline, and knowing Mum and Dad as well; how much joy they get, sitting together, watching me play – that gave me enough confidence to go and play, and they were desperate for me to go and play, and I knew I could hop on a flight at any time and come back. But for those couple of weeks, I was in India, especially now I look back on it, my mind was not in India, it was back home the whole time," he said.
Cummins said at that time he only wanted to be with his mother and even thought of quitting as Australia captain to do so.
"I remember my manager and a couple of other people around me who I normally listen to were calling me and being like, 'I think we need to give a little bit of a reason why you've gone home', and I'm like, 'Nah, don't care', and he's like, 'Nah, you're getting a lot of heat here, you've got to explain yourself', and I was like, 'I honestly do not care what people think'," he said.
“After about six or seven days when I knew I wasn't going to come back to India, we said Mum's in palliative care. But I literally could not have cared less what people were saying about me,” Cummins said.
(PTI inputs)
