As a captain, Cummins has achieved it all, winning the World Test Championship, retaining the Ashes and now claiming the One-Day World Cup in India.

He was also part of Australia’s 2015 World Cup win, played every match of Australia’s 2021 T20 World Cup and has been ranked the world’s No. 1 Test bowler.

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But despite achieving nearly everything you can on the field, the 30-year-old Aussie skipper become a lightning rod for criticism throughout his career, particularly when it comes to social causes he believes in.

Often called the second most important job in Australia behind the Primer Minister, Cummins has used his platform to highlight causes he believes in, in particular climate change, kneeling for Black Lives Matter and the Voice to Parliament referendum.

Labelled “a woke far-left climate catastrophist clown” and “Captain Woke” among a torrent of abuse over his public stance, Cummins has heard it all.

But when asked by Sarah Ferguson on ABC’s 7.30on Wednesday night whether the backlash may make him rethink speaking his mind, Cummins doubled down.

“It definitely makes you stop and think,” he began.

“With this role, it’s got such a large scale in terms of the amount of people that have an opinion on anything you do. So even if 90 per cent are with you, that 10 per cent is still a lot of people.

“It makes you think, double think if the way you’re going about it is the right way. It makes you change or, if anything, it’s probably emboldened some of my views that this is a good thing.

“If I don’t stay strong on this and I pander to a loud minority, that’s not a good thing.”

But with so many people, judging your every step, does the criticism ever get inside his head?

“I think you’d be lying if you said it doesn’t,” he said.

“I think you’ve got to find ways to manage it just like you manage your body as a professional athlete.

“At times you wind it up when you feel like you need a little extra motivation and other times when it’s not servicing a purpose, you try to shut it out as best you can. But it’s part of the job.

“You’re not on an island. You can’t just say, ‘I want to play cricket in front of millions of people’ but also ‘I don’t want anyone to have an opinion on me’. That’s not what we sign up for. It’s something you get better at the longer you play.

“As long as I know I’ve got great relationships with teammates, family – they know who I am. I know who I am. Outside noise is just that.”

Despite the criticism, Cummins launched a program called Cricket for Climate, which aims to connect athletes to commit to personally donate to their own cricket clubs to help provide solar panels in order to help the clubs become carbon neutral.

Cummins himself sponsored Penrith Cricket Club and the program hopes to expand to help 4000 local clubs connect solar panels, become carbon neutral and help grassroots cricket save money to reinvest in playing rather than power bills.

“It’s a great place to encourage conversation around these topics,” Cummins said.

“I grew up in Penrith and we put solar panels on my home cricket club out there and it’s probably not your traditional area where you’d see old blokes sitting around talking about how good the money savings on their roofs are.

“There’s a lot of positives that have been had through that program and something I’m really proud of.”

But despite putting his money where his mouth is, it hasn’t stopped Cummins from becoming a target for the critics.

Cummins revealed last year he wouldn’t feature in advertising for then-Cricket Australia major sponsor Alinta Energy due to issues with the energy provider’s parent company Pioneer Sail Holdings, one of the Australia’s biggest carbon emitters.

Alinta Energy later announced it would end its four-year partnership with Cricket Australia in 2023 “due to a change in its brand strategy”, a deal believed to be worth $40m.

Ferguson said she spoke with the 79th captain of the Wallabies and current Independent Senator for the ACT David Pocock about Cummins, who said: “He is a leader for the times. He manages to be a great bloke under a huge amount of pressure. It should give Australians a bit of extra pride to have him representing us.”

Asked how those comments hit him, Cummins said “it was great to hear”.

“It’s probably not for me to say — I just try to be myself,” Cummins said. “I just try to be myself every day and I really enjoy the role, working with other people and trying to bring the best out of them.”

As for a stint in politics, Cummins said: “You never say never but probably not. I’ll leave that to David (Pocock) and plenty of other wonderful people.”