Sydney [Australia], October 13 (ANI): Ahead of The Ashes 2025 at home against England, Australia skipper Pat Cummins is cautiously optimistic about his return to competitive cricket, revealing that while he is still a few weeks away from bowling on the turf, each training session is showing steady progress.

Cummins has been battling a back problem in recent times and is yet to return to the bowling crease at training ahead of the opening Test of the summer that commences in Perth on November 21.

While Cummins knows he is facing a race against time to feature in that first ICC World Test Championship contest against England, he is still giving himself an outside chance of being fit.

'I'd say probably less likely than likely, but we've still got a bit of time. I'm running today and running kind of every second day, and each runs a little bit longer, and then we get into bowling prep next week. So I'm probably a couple of weeks away from actually putting on the spikes and bowling out on the turf. But it's been a good couple of weeks. Each session feels better and better,' Cummins said as quoted by ICC.

Cummins knows that he will need to make a swift return to bowling at training if he is to play the series opener in Perth.

'You'd want probably at least a month in the nets. If you are to play in a Test match, you want to make sure you are right to bowl 20 overs in a day, and you don't have to think about it. Four weeks is pretty tight, but I think somewhere around that mark,' the speedster admitted.

Cummins believes his back injury won't be a significant concern in the long term, and he still plans to feature in as many Ashes Tests as possible, with the goal of leading Australia at next year's ICC Men's T20 World Cup.

'It's a back injury that I haven't had for about seven or eight years, and I've played a lot of cricket between that. If anything, looking back when I was, say, 20 years old and I had this injury, I was a bit worried about what my body could actually handle. But I know in myself that if I get it right and do it properly, when I come back, I shouldn't have to worry about it all. And hopefully I can play as much, even more cricket than I had previously in the last few years,' the 32-year-old player said. (ANI)