Maria, the mother of Pat Cummins, passed away from cancer in 2018.
The captain of Australia, Pat Cummins, has not yet come to grips with his mother’s passing and called coming to India for a Test series at the “hardest time of my life” when she was receiving treatment back home. Maria Cummins, his mother, passed away from cancer last year. In an interview for the Imperfects podcast, Cummins stated, “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.” While playing a Test series in India, Cummins went home to be with his sick mother, who was receiving palliative care.
“Flying away… That was the most difficult time of my life. I most likely felt that in the preceding 12 months. Every time I flew away, I thought, ‘Time is limited here; I’m making a deliberate decision to travel and play somewhere rather than spend it at home.'” Cummins stated that he attempted to keep Maria’s dying days as private as possible and did not explain to her why he flew home after playing two Tests in India last year.
“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 stated.
At one point, according to Cummins, he considered giving up his position as captain of Australia in order to spend more time with his mother.
“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 added.
“After about six or seven days, when I realized I wouldn’t be able to return to India, we said Mum was in palliative care.” But I couldn’t have cared less what people said about me.
