During the just-concluded Test series against India, Australian opener Aaron Finch was a walking wicket. He looked unsure and out-of-form and that translated into a series of low scores during the series.
Finch got just one fifty in the series, which was a difficult one for openers in general. But with scores of 0, 11, 50, 25, 8 and 3 in the first three Tests, the Australian selectors had no option but to drop him for the Sydney Test.
Looking back at the series, Finch, who is also Australia’s ODI captain, regrets not having the courage to stick with his training methods.
“It was my choice to keep hitting balls and you’re searching for form, you’re searching for something,” Finch said. “You don’t want to walk off after getting out in a Test ... and think ‘geez, if only I’d hit some more balls’.
“That was a really hard thing to bring myself to do – to not bat.
“I know I’ve had success not batting a huge amount... I just didn’t have the courage to stick to it.”
Finch said the feedback from team management had been exactly that – take a break.
Former Australia skipper Michael Clarke had argued for Finch to be moved down the order during the series but the team management never obliged. As a result, the aggressive opener often seemed to be torn between playing his natural game and blunting the Indian pace attack. He managed to do neither.
Still, Finch took the decision of the selectors as well as one could.
“I said this before, when I was dropped from the one-day team after a really lean run – at times you’d like to have some bullets to fire back, but there are just none,” he said.
“It would have been a pretty easy call, to be fair.”
