CHRIS Naish, former Richmond and Port Adelaide footballer, rang me Monday morning. ''Isn't it good to see a kid take six-for in his first Test?'' he said. He was right.

It was like seeing a big rain at the end of a dry spell. The land gets a drenching and you know that the whole cycle of regeneration is about to kick in again. Another crop is on its way.

Australian cricket has been a tired old vehicle for a while now. What better arrival on the scene could there be than an 18-year-old fast bowler with the ability to terrify batsmen around the world who is remembered by his primary school teacher for his ''gorgeous smile''?

There was, it must be said, an issue of timing in his appearance. Australian sport, generally, is in a lull. Our horses struggled in the Melbourne Cup. Thorpie's comeback in the pool has stalled. The Socceroos are game but the odds are always against them.

For a long time, the Australian cricket team was our national sports team, but a couple of things have taken the lustre off that idea. One is the passing of a generation of great players. (Not only that, we're having to come to terms with what's happened to Warnie, the roly-poly Aussie larrikin. In thrall to English actress Liz Hurley, he has returned from the Old Dart looking like a British Airways steward.) Too much international cricket is being played. What was once exclusive is now commonplace and the stench of corruption is upon the game. But still, within us, we long for revival.

The South Africans are wonderful opponents. Jacques Kallis has a claim to being the great all-rounder of his generation, Dale Steyn is said to be the best fast bowler in the world. Steyn's action is as smooth as that employed by the New Zealand master Richard Hadlee, only quicker; he hits the bowling crease with maximum thrust and superb balance.

Cricket is a game of grace and power. It is also a game of hurt. The first ball Cummins received from Steyn arced up at his ribs. He fended it away. As a batsman - although certainly not as a bowler - he looks like a kid from the bush. His style is loose and elastic. He jumps about on the crease and bat and body can find themselves a distance apart. But he took on the game and set about winning a match that most of us were only watching to see if Punter could reignite his career.

Periodically, people talk about a set of mysterious entities in the stratosphere called ''the sporting gods'' and, in truth, it does seem at times that events on the sports field are preordained. One such moment was when Steyn, at his most potent and threatening, dropped Cummins off his own bowling, snatching at the ball as it sped past him at shoulder height.

Steyn then beat Cummins with three successive deliveries. We loved that our lad swung lustily at each one. We loved that he missed. Next, the intricate laws of this curious game saved Cummins from being out lbw to leg spinner Imran Tahir. The ball would have hit the stumps but was judged to have struck him outside off stump - just.

Cummins hit the four that won the match, finishing with a score of 13 - no ordinary number and one usually taken as an ill omen. The young man later explained his climactic stroke this way: ''I was pretty much thinking, yeah, if he throws it up there, there's four to win, so try and go over the top somewhere.'' I am taken with his use of ''pretty much''. It is as if he has an aversion to absolute statements.

After the match, Cummins spoke to journalists before ringing home. An Indian journalist reported that Cummins had provoked ''laughter from journalists at a post-play press conference'' by saying, ''I pretty much came straight here. I thought this was more important.'' Now that is innocence.

We all know that we shouldn't invest so much hope and emotion in an 18-year-old, that his next match could be his last. But the ancients believed in auspices - signs that foretold the future.

How could Pat Cummins' debut have been more auspicious?