New Delhi, Sep 17 (IANS) Australia head coach Andrew McDonald said he remains confident of skipper Pat Cummins playing a significant role in the upcoming Ashes series, despite currently being sidelined with a lumbar bone stress issue that flared up during the Test tour of the West Indies.

Cummins, 32, is currently undergoing a period of rest and rehabilitation, but has indicated that he expects to resume bowling well ahead of the Ashes. With over two months remaining before the first Ashes Test against England begins at Optus Stadium in Perth on November 21, McDonald believes there is ample time for Cummins to recover.

“We’re confident that he’s going to partake in the Ashes. I think to sensationalise that he’s not (going to play) would be an overreaction. It’s not ideal. I’m not going to sit here and say that it’s ideal. He does have a lumbar bone stress issue there. So, he’ll just work through what his return to play looks like.

“We’ve got time. If it happened any closer (to the series), then you’d have to be making sort of key decisions around what it all looks like, but we have got time… as I said, we’re really, really hopeful that he will play a key part in the Ashes.

“We’ll see what that looks like for Pat, but there’s a lot more information to come and I think everyone will probably live through that with the footage of him training and when he re-enters around the group. We’re hopeful that you’ll see him around our One Day team preparing as well. We look forward to our captain taking a significant part in the Ashes,” said McDonald on SEN Radio.

On the possibility of Cummins playing all five Tests, McDonald stated it was too early to make definitive plans. “In our planning, we never really pitch that forward to our players. As the season or the summer unfolds, if you get some shortened games and you get some games where the load’s organically being managed by how quick the Test matches have been, then you can start to flip into, ‘This is a possibility’.

“We’ve got some good spaces between Test matches one, two and three, so that feels really manageable for most of our quicks. Where the real stress point comes is Test match four and five, and that’s going to be the real art of management across the summer,” he said.

Should Cummins be unavailable for any part of the series, McDonald expressed confidence in veteran batter Steve Smith’s ability to step in as Australia’s captain in the Ashes, citing his previous experience in the role.

“We’re well enough drilled. Steve Smith’s got a lot of captaincy experience. We haven’t really got to that conversation yet because there’s no finality or timeline on Patty. I’m just thinking out loud here that I think Steve’s done it five or six times in the absence of Pat.

“So that would be an obvious person to step in, and we’d have great confidence in him. It seems an obvious choice (to have him step in), he understands how the team operates and he’s a very good leader in his own right,” he concluded.

–IANS

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