Australia’s Test captain Pat Cummins has provided a candid update on his recovery from lumbar back stress, conceding that he is “less likely than likely” to feature in the first Ashes Test at Perth next month.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!Speaking at the Kayo Sports Summer of Cricket launch in Sydney, the 32-year-old said he was feeling better with each recovery session but admitted he was “a couple of weeks away” from bowling on turf. Cummins resumed running last week and plans to start bowling drills next week. “You’d want at least probably a month in the nets,” he explained. “If you play a Test match, you want to make sure you’re right to bowl 20 overs in a day and you don’t have to really think about it. So four weeks is pretty tight, but I think somewhere around that mark.”While coach Andrew McDonald called the outlook more optimistic in the past week, Cummins stressed the difficulty of transitioning from no bowling to competing in a five-Test series. “With these things, it’s pretty hard to go from not bowling or doing anything at all to suddenly playing five Tests,” he said. “First steps are trying to give [me] a shot at being right, and then we’ll work it out how much I play.”

Cummins admitted he was willing to take calculated risks, given the Ashes’ significance in the next six to 12 months. “This is the big series in this next six to 12-month block. But you’ve got to weigh that up against taking stupid risks as well that might cost you in the long term.”The injury, which first caused discomfort during Australia’s 3-0 sweep of the West Indies in July, remains somewhat mysterious. “Maybe it was sometime throughout last summer, maybe it’s been brewing for a little while, we don’t exactly know but West Indies was the first time I felt it,” Cummins said.He also expressed confidence in Australia’s depth if he is unavailable. “Scotty [Boland], he’s coming off a hat-trick, so no doubt he’ll be in for a big summer,” Cummins said. “One of the things we’ve done really well is when someone’s missed out, someone else has stepped straight in and done a brilliant job.”