Cummins to sit out white-ball matches against South Africa

Pat Cummins is set to sit out the white-ball matches against South Africa next month as part of his build-up towards the Ashes later in the year.

Cummins had already been rested for the five-match T20I series against West Indies along with Mitchell Starc and Travis Head. Now Josh Hazlewood has been added to those returning home after the Test series, having originally been included in the squad, with Xavier Bartlett named his replacement.

While Hazlewood will feature against South Africa in the Top End during August - a tour which includes three T20Is and three ODIs across Darwin, Cairns and Mackay - Cummins will move into a period of fitness work ahead of the home summer.

He is eyeing being involved in a short T20I tour to New Zealand in early October and some of the limited-overs matches against India ahead of the Ashes in late November. There is also the potential of a Sheffield Shield match for New South Wales, which he didn't do last season before the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

"I'll have a good training block for the next couple of months, six weeks or so," Cummins told reporters at Sabina Park. "Probably not bowling, but lots of gym work. [My] body feels pretty good, but there's always little bits and pieces you're always trying to get right and then build up for the summer. So it'll probably look like white-ball [cricket]…we've got some [matches against] New Zealand, India, potentially a Shield game and then into the home summer."

Cummins remains Australia's ODI captain but has only led them twice in the format since the 2023 World Cup final. He missed the Champions Trophy earlier this year due to an ankle problem he managed during the Tests series against India.

The early stages of next season's Sheffield Shield are shaping as key for Australia's Ashes plans amid the continued search for a settled top order. Sam Konstas will have two more innings to make a mark in the West Indies and Usman Khawaja two more to settle the talk around his form. Cameron Green, meanwhile, will be looking to build on the second-innings half-century in Grenada.

Attention will then turn to how those players perform ahead of England's arrival. Green is part of the T20I squad in the West Indies and will likely feature against South Africa before focus shifts to a potential return to bowling. Konstas is expected to be part of the four-day matches on the Australia A tour of India in September, but Khawaja is unlikely to play again until the domestic season starts for Queensland.

"There's a lot of Shield cricket to come and some Aussie A stuff as well," Cummins said on the significance of the final Test in the West Indies. "I think [if] you do well at Test level, any time it's going to kind of make your case more compelling. I think there's a bit of a connection to the summer, but it feels a long way away at the moment."

Meanwhile, Bartlett, who holds a Cricket Australia contract, will get the opportunity to build on his impressive early T20I record of 11 wickets at 14.72 from seven matches. He will arrive in the Caribbean after a productive MLC campaign for San Francisco Unicorns which, as of Friday, put him as the tournament's leading wicket-taker.

He has been joined as a late call-up by Jake Fraser-McGurk, who has replaced left-arm quick Spencer Johnson with the selectors altering the balance of the squad. Johnson is nursing back soreness that he picked up during the IPL. Fraser-McGurk, who played alongside Bartlett at Unicorns in MLC, started the tournament strongly but finished with four single-figure scores in five innings.

He has made 113 runs in seven T20Is with a top score of 50 against Scotland last year. He was dropped by Delhi Capitals during this year's IPL where he averaged 9.16, which came after a lean BBL for Melbourne Renegades that produced 188 runs at 18.80, 95 of which came in the last match of the season against Brisbane Heat.

The T20I series against West Indies starts on July 20 with two matches at Sabina Park before the final three are played in St Kitts.