Cummins, who is not a selector, was never going to confirm Labuschagne’s immediate future straight after Australia’s two-day win in Mackay but did indicate time was close to running out for him to deliver on what team-mates and coaches believe have been promising signs after a series that brought scores of 1, 31 and 4.
“He has not scored the runs he would’ve liked,” Cummins said. “I did say a couple of days ago – and I think it still stands – he’s been batting fantastically well off the field. But it doesn’t mean much; you’ve got to convert that into runs out there.
“We’ve got a bit of time. Selectors will get together… in the next week or two and start nutting out that next Test squad. We know he’s class when he’s at his best. And going into this series, we thought he was pretty close to his best. But he needs to start transferring that into runs out there, so we’ll see in the next couple of weeks.”
“[There was] some really good bowling in there [in Mackay], at times some little bit below average batting, myself included,” Cummins said. “If we want to stay No. 1 in the world, really win every Test match and be as good as we think we can be, I think we were probably a little bit below par in both matches.
“[There were] a couple of shining lights; Greeny had an awesome series. Every time he batted, he looked really solid. But I think we probably could have extended that lead yesterday and really taken the game away from them, put on a 250-plus lead. And that goes to me as well, I’m part of the batting group… finding a way when they [Bangladesh] had that little run of wickets last night, how do we try and just weather that storm?”
Cummins hinted that there may need to be some changes to the batting approaches but said players would have the freedom to continue to play in a way that suited them. Travis Head dragged on for the third time in the series in Mackay while Alex Carey began the 4 for 3 collapse on the first evening when he attempted to loft Mehidy Hasan Miraz down the ground.
Australia’s next challenge in Test cricket will come, fitness permitting, with the formidable threat of Kagiso Rabada and Marco Jansen on early-season South Africa wickets.
“If we’re not scoring the runs, you have to look at your style and your method,” Cummins said. “We try and do that quite individually. Everyone goes about it a little bit differently. I think if you take last week, I thought Bangladesh kind of played at their tempo. They slowed play a little bit and we could have perhaps been a little bit more patient.
“So, I don’t think it’s always hitting your way out of trouble. But I think when the conditions do get a little bit extreme, we don’t want batters who are sitting ducks. You’ve got to try and find a way to turn over the strike, make your margin there a little bit smaller, make the bowler think a little bit, make him worried about missing the spot.”
On the victory itself, Cummins said it was the response Australia needed after the shock loss in Darwin. “A lot of things went right these couple of days and a lot of things went wrong last week,” he said at the post-match presentation. “We needed to bounce back and it was a great couple of days for the lads.”
Andrew McGlashan is a deputy editor at Cricinfo
