It's the pinnacle of international cricket - Cummins on World Cup win

Pat Cummins termed winning the World Cup as the 'pinnacle of international cricket' after Australia emerged victorious in a rather one-sided affair at the Narendra Modi stadium in Ahmedabad on Sunday (November 19). A relentless performance with the ball helped them restrict India to 240 before Travis Head put on a show, scoring a fabulous century that helped Australia chase down the target in 43 overs to lift the trophy in the men's edition for the sixth time.

"That's huge, I think that's the pinnacle of international cricket, winning a one-day World Cup. Especially over here in India, in front of a crowd like this. Yeah, that's huge. Yeah, it's been a big year for everyone, but our cricket team has been here in India, Ashes, World Test Championship and to top it off with this is just huge and these are the moments that you'll remember for the rest of your life," said Cummins at the post-match press conference.

"It's just every international team comes together. You only get a shot at it every four years. Even if you have a ten-year career, you might only get two chances at it. And yeah, it's just the whole cricket world stops with this World Cup. So, it doesn't get any better."

This has been a year of successes for Australia, what with a World Test Championship title by beating India, retaining the Ashes in England and now the ODI World Cup victory. And when asked to rate the best, Cummins was quick to again label the World Cup win as their 'pinnacle'.

"This is, no doubt," said Cummins. "The World Test Championship was huge like again another two-year campaign - but yet an ODI World Cup - it's the rich history I think and to come out of a place like India where you know the conditions are so different to back home, it's pretty gruelling, 11 games in whatever it was, 5 - 6 weeks, but yeah, the way the group stuck together and got through it and yeah holding the medal is - that's the pinnacle."

One thing that Cummins hoped for before the match was to silence the humongous crowd at the stadium, and Australia lived up to that with their clinical performance. Barring the aggressive start with the bat by Rohit Sharma and India's early strikes with the ball, the 92,000-odd who had turned up at the ground spent the majority of the game in stunned silence.

"I always like to say I'm pretty relaxed but I was a little bit nervous this morning you know just pacing around waiting for it to get started just seeing the sea of blue in the hotel, getting nearer the ground and seeing the sea of blue, walking, making its way to the ground, all the cars parked with their selfie cameras out, you kind of knew you were walking into something pretty special. And then to walk out for the toss and just see 130,000 blue Indian shirts, it's an experience you'll never forget. Awesome day and the good thing was they weren't too noisy for most of it," noted Cummins.

The crowd was especially shocked when Virat Kohli, having registered a fifty and looking good for more, played a Cummins' delivery onto the stumps. "We did take a second in the huddle just to acknowledge the silence that was going around the crowd. Yeah, it just felt like it was one of those days where it was all made for him to score another hundred like he normally does and yeah that (getting him out) was satisfying," said the Australia captain.

Cummins, who has been leading Australia for a while now, spoke about how the players have bought into what the team needs, which in turn has translated into proud moments on the field.

"It's probably for others to judge that but yeah, couldn't be prouder of the team for the last few years. We've had some tough series but we've won some amazing series as well and everyone stood up and we feel like we've got a great red ball team and the white ball team has won two trophies in the last few years so it's, yeah, things are looking pretty rosy.

"It's really tough because you're playing against the best teams in the world and every team wants to achieve the same thing. It's really tough. I always keep saying about our team, we've got a lot of experience and we've got many different characters which is great, you want that in a team. But everyone buys in. Everyone does what the team needs. Everyone's there to look after each other. And I think that's something that's contributed to a few of our successes over the years," Cummins said.