Pat Cummins is likely to make a return to Australia's premier red-ball tournament, the Sheffield Shield, to fine tune his preparation ahead of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
The right-arm fast bowler last played the tournament in February 2021 and has featured in nine games thus far. The Australia Test skipper is looking to use the Sheffield Shield and the ODI series against Pakistan preceding India's Test tour to get himself battle-hardened for what is expected to be a hard-fought contest between the two WTC (World Test Championship) 2021-23 finalists.
"Ronnie (Australia head coach Andrew McDonald) called me the other day and said we need to talk about this," Cummins told News Corp. "I prefer to go a little bit fresher but definitely play some cricket going in.
"So I'd say it's either two or three ODIs, plus a Shield (game) or maybe just some Shield, maybe some NSW one-day stuff. I imagine kind of late October/early November will be when I start playing building up for the Tests."
Cummins, 31, recently played in the second edition of the Major League Cricket (MLC) for San Francisco Unicorns and has been rested for Australia's tour of Scotland and England as a part of the team management's workload program.
Notably, the Aussies will take on Scotland in a three-match T20I series starting September 4. The series will culminate with the third T20I on September 7.
Australia will then take on their Ashes rivals in a white-ball series comprising three T20Is and five ODIs.
The T20I series will get underway in Southampton on September 11 and will conclude with the third T20I in Manchester on September 15.
The first ODI match will be played at Trent Bridge in Nottingham and will culminate with the fifth ODI on September 29.
Notably, the first Test of the five-match series between India and Australia will be played at the Perth Stadium.
