Straight through: Malan is clean bowled by Cummins. Credit:AAP "I believe Pat is at the stage of his career where he could bowl on anything and bowl well," Lillee told Fairfax Media on Tuesday. "The thing that I've noticed, and this is the thing with great fast bowlers ... batsmen tend to not get onto them. They've always got something up their sleeve. They rarely get torn apart and they seem to sort of have this belief and ability to bowl well on any wicket to any batsman in any situation, and he has that." Cummins demonstrated he had the brains to match the brawn on even the flattest of tracks in India this year, and his ability to out-think a batsman and heap pressure on the opposition has continued in his first Ashes series. If he lost any speed in the reshaping of his technique, Cummins has well and truly compensated for it elsewhere.

"That was part of the renovation ... that he'd probably go backward in pace to get this slight remodelling," Lillee said. "But I said to him that the very, very good fast bowlers always come down in pace at some stage. You've got to learn some tricks and learn to be able to bowl a great length at any stage and then you vary it from there. "Pat had to remodel his action to get it safer, and to do that you often slow down for a while." Lillee was first drawn to Cummins by watching his man-of-the-match performance on Test debut as a teenage tearaway against South Africa in Johannesburg in 2011. Later, when Cummins was on the comeback trail from yet another fitness setback, he was recommended to Lillee by Johnson, who told him: "You've just got to see Dennis".

Cummins took the advice, paid for his own airfare to Perth and accommodation there and flew over to begin an association that continues today. "From an 18-year-old, when I first saw some highlights of him in South Africa ... there are only half a dozen like this in the world who made me go 'Wow' when I've seen them bowl," Lillee said. "I felt quite proud that he asked me to help him, but let me tell you the hard work has been done by him. And much like Mitch Johnson and Brett Lee, the contact is always open and we've kept that going. "When he was probably going through that frustrating period of a few years I said: 'When you come back in again you're just going to be a very young man with 10 years left.' And that's what he had to have in the back of his mind so he didn't rush things." With Cummins thriving, Australia now have a highly effective bowling unit - also featuring Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon - that is winning rave reviews and matches.