'Good fun': Captain Cummins makes the perfect start

The captaincy career of Pat Cummins could not have started any better as he recorded a win in his first match in charge of NSW's one-day side.

The Blues beat Victoria by 59 runs at North Sydney Oval, with Cummins contributing 49 from 22 balls with the bat and 3-38 opening the bowling.

When he wasn't bowling, Cummins was stationed at mid-off where he communicated with the bowlers, rotated the attack, and made minimal field changes.

Senior teammates Steve Smith and Moises Henriques helped Cummins manoeuvre the field as NSW began their March One-Day Cup campaign with a comprehensive victory.

"It was good fun," Cummins said. "Always a bit more relaxed coming here to NSW.

"It's still on TV, still a good crowd around. Standing around all your teammates you've known a long time it was good fun out there."

Smith, who was named player of the match for his 127, praised his new skipper's effort in what was a relatively comfortable induction.

"He was good. Pretty easy day today," Smith said.

"I don’t think there was too much to sort of do.

"It was just about bowling good hard lengths, nice and straight and from there just squeezing in the field and making them make the mistakes."

Smith and Cummins appear to be the frontrunners for the Australia captaincy when Tim Paine and Aaron Finch leave their posts.

But with just one match under his belt, Cummins is still learning the tricks of the trade, particularly managing his bowlers.

"To be honest, the thing I was most nervous (about) was stuffing up my overs, getting my maths wrong," Cummins said.

"My mum is a maths teacher so I wouldn't have lived that down if I didn’t get that right."

One challenge Cummins will regularly confront as captain is when to bowl himself.

Today he took the new ball and bowled five overs straight for a return of 2-12.

He brought himself back on in the 31st over for two overs, then came back in the 43rd over to remove No.10 Zak Evans in another two-over spell.

Cummins says he hopes to keep learning how to manage his own overs just as much as the rest of his attack.

"I lent on Moey (Henriques) a lot for that because sometimes I felt like I needed to give someone else another bowl and he's like 'you should bowl' and vice versa," he said.

"I'm sure it's something you get a feel for. We've all played a lot of cricket so nothing too drastic."

Cummins will back up on Wednesday for the Marsh Sheffield Shield clash against Victoria at the SCG, where regular Shield skipper Peter Nevill will captain the Blues.