Pat Cummins does not make Major League Cricket sound like a tough sell. "It was like, 'do you want to come to the US for a few weeks in summer, be around a team where I'm good mates with a few of the guys, play a bit of golf and play a bit of cricket in a new country'," he tells ESPNcricinfo from Dallas. "I jumped at it."
Yet his lucrative four-year contract with San Francisco Unicorns was a paradigm of change in the cricket world. Cummins had only previously played in one overseas T20 league - the IPL - but his interest was piqued by the identity of the franchise's owners: Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan, a pair of India-born venture capitalists based in California.
Five injury-ruined years early in his career made Cummins acutely aware that professional sport is transitory. He studied business at Sydney's University of Technology during his prolonged rehabilitation, sits on the Australian Cricketers' Association's board of directors, and has used his platform to advocate for action on climate change.
It is why the owners' Silicon Valley background was the clincher for him. "It's a space that I find super interesting, particularly the venture-capital world," Cummins says. "I potentially see that as something I'd like to do more of post-cricket, so [this is] a way to align with a few of those guys, learn off them over the next few years, be around some of those conversations."
The tournament effectively provides him with a chance to network: since arriving in the US, Cummins has already "informally" discussed potential opportunities over coffee. "If it's something I do enjoy, hopefully I could dive a little bit deeper for the back-end of my career, and then maybe move into that space a bit more professionally after cricket."
Cummins' contract with Unicorns runs until 2027. By then, he will be 34 and closer to the end of his international career. "The intention is definitely to make this a long-term partnership," he says. "Obviously playing for Australia, it's going to clash at certain times. But outside of that, I want to make sure MLC is a real focus."
MLC remains at a nascent stage, with just 25 matches shared across two venues. But its combination of high salaries, a short window, and the novelty of playing in the US have proved attractive. Its pool of overseas players comfortably outstrips that of rival leagues, including the Hundred in England. "I hadn't thought of the Hundred," Cummins admits.
Cummins makes it clear that, as Test and ODI captain, "playing for Australia will come first". Cricket Australia only made him available for four out of six MLC group games this year to manage his workload after the T20 World Cup, and his availability for the 2025 edition will depend on a potential clash with a two-match Test series in the Caribbean.
He has also been rested for Australia's white-ball tour to Scotland and England in September, giving him a prolonged break ahead of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Tellingly, that decision received minimal pushback.
"Everyone's a little bit more realistic about the schedules nowadays," Cummins says. "We spend ten-plus months of the year away on the road, so some tours probably carry a little bit more importance than others. For the guys that play all three formats, you're always trying to make sure you're peaking for those major events - and it feels like there's been about ten major events in the last 18 months, so I haven't really taken much time to reinvest back in my body."
Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc are part of September's tour, but Cummins had long planned to miss it. "That window has always been earmarked as a time to really give my body a rest and do close to a full pre-season," he explains. "I should get six or eight weeks off bowling and then build up again. Once this MLC opportunity came up and we mapped out the plan, it didn't really change much.
"I still get that same amount of break and then just probably start one or two weeks later heading into the summer… I'll get home, I'll have a good six or eight weeks off bowling where I'll get in the gym every day, do some running, and get some strength back into my body. And then we've got a big Test match series [against India] for our home summer, so that'll be the focus."
Cummins has only taken one wicket in three MLC appearances, but has helped Unicorns seal a top-two finish, closing out a win over MI New York on Friday night. "It's a really high standard," he says. "The calibre of players is ridiculous and for a competition in its second season, it's super organised and super competitive… I couldn't speak highly enough of it."
Australia played exclusively in the Caribbean during the T20 World Cup, but Cummins watched the US leg with interest: "That Pakistan-India game looked insane… everyone talks about baseball, basketball and NFL, but there's hundreds of thousands of cricketers here going about their work quietly who are now starting to get a platform."
Unicorns' long-term ambition is to bring MLC to California, with plans to build a stadium in San Jose. "Hopefully that will be ready to go in the next couple of years, and I'll be coming back to San Fran a lot," Cummins says. That sentence alone from Australia's captain is proof that cricket has changed for good.
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