Australian skipper Pat Cummins has targeted IPL for this return to Cricket after being sidelined in the Sri Lanka tour and the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 due to ankle injury.

Pat Cummins Pat Cummins was ruled out of the ICC Champions Trophy due to an ankle injury, what he picked during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

"It's been an amazing month or so just having full focus on family time and not having to do too much training or have my eye on a tour. Just being totally present has been really special," Cummins told cricket.com.au.

"It was weird watching the Sri Lanka Test series. I haven't seen the boys play on TV really for years. They were fantastic, the boys were basically faultless. I could follow along and just enjoy it really."

"The ankle is starting to come good," said Cummins.

"It's a funny one – it's not like a hamstring where you need six weeks (to recover). It's one of those ones where it really just needs a bit (more) rest to settle down. I've been doing loads of rehab in the gym and trying to build back up slowly.

"Especially for a fast bowler, you've got to kind of step towards things. Once you have a bit of time off, you’ve got to start running again, and then you got to start bowling, and start building up.

"So we just ran out of time for Pakistan.

"It's not necessarily a new (injury), it's not anything that's going to be long-term, but it's just one of those ones you've got to manage. A bit of a break now, hopefully it sets it up for the next year or so."

"That's the aim," he said. "It's four overs in T20s. So physically it's quite a nice build up for the World Test Championship final, and then the Test matches after that.

"That's the aim at this stage – start bowling over the next week or so, building up, and should be right for IPL.

"It's probably just making sure you're still bowling quite a few balls (during the IPL). The good thing about a T20 tournament is the intensity is really high, so that obviously helps quite a bit.