“It’s a hell of a headache for the selectors,” Former Australian skipper Ian Chappell told Wide World of Sports. “But you have to think about what’s worse, dropping him now or dropping him in the middle of the World Cup?”
So poor was Australian skipper Aaron Finch’s form at the start of the year that many others would have shared Chappell’s doubts.
Starting with the series against South Africa in November 2018, he scored just one fifty [93 against India at Ranchi] in 11 innings. In the remaining 10 innings, he was dismissed below 15 seven times. He looked out of sorts and badly out of form with faults in his technique and mental makeup coming to the fore.
Australia coach Justin Langer backed him during that tough period and that trust bore fruit against Sri Lanka as Finch slammed a classic 153 to help the Aussies put 334 on board before Mitchell Starc, Kane Richardson and Co came to the party in the Sri Lankan innings.
Finch started off with some superbly timed hits to the fence before settling down at a lower tempo. Then, he picked up the pace again in the latter part of his innings. In many ways, it was the kind of ODI innings’ that coaches love.
The Australian skipper is now the top run scorer at this year’s World Cup, has equalled Jason Roy for the highest individual score of the tournament so far and also overtaken Ricky Ponting for highest individual score by an Australian captain at a World Cup.
But he believes a change in mindset has helped him change things around.
“I probably just changed my mindset a little bit more than anything. I started to doubt my game a lot before that in the Australian summer and there was a lot of times when I was just questioning every single decision that I was making, whether it was technical, mental, physical,” said Finch in the post-match press conference.
Finch added: “Everything that I could – that I was doing, I was just questioning because you’re looking for an answer that you don’t know what the answer is. So it can be really tough at times when you don’t know what the end result is, but you’re searching so hard for something you don’t know.”
It wasn’t that Finch wasn’t working hard. He spent a lot of time in the nets and when that wasn’t working, he tried taking time off from the game in a bid to rediscover his confidence but nothing seemed to click in place.
“It was a really great learning for me over the summer. Obviously would have been nice to have that at 22 and not 32, but I think overall, what I learned was you can strip it back as much as you want, but it doesn’t change the basics of the game. The basics is an opening batter to go out there and defend the good ball and score runs,” Finch said.
He added: “So for me, I was looking for everything other than just what the most basic thing, which is watch the ball and react to it. I mean, you can butter it up anyway, but I was just going back to the basics, going back, doing a little bit of mental work on changing my mindset to just be positive… And Andrew McDermott always says to me, ‘If you get caught at mid-on or you get caught at first slip, you’re still out, so play your natural game’.”
The Warner we knew?
And in those words lies a lesson for David Warner. The Australian opener had a forgettable outing as he struggled to get going. His 26 off 48 balls robbed the innings of the early momentum and allowed Sri Lanka back into the game.
After the game against Pakistan in which Warner scored a century, Australia’s assistant coach Ricky Ponting had spoken about how he was advising the left-hander to adopt a ‘see ball, hit ball’ approach.
“I think in the back of his own mind to a certain degree, I think he was a little bit more worried about getting out than scoring runs. We said to him after the last game, ‘mate, just go out and see ball, hit ball’,” said Ponting.
But against Sri Lanka, he seemed to fall into the old trap once again. He was caught between wanting to play his shots and staying in the middle… a far cry from the Warner of old, who would attack without fear. In the match against India too, he was bottled up by the Indian pacemen. This isn’t to say that he isn’t scoring runs but rather a reflection of the manner in which the runs are scored and whether this is what the team wants.
He doesn’t need to look too far for a solution though. Finch’s return to form has been all about playing the natural game and if Warner can do that too, Australia will become truly formidable.
Steve Smith has found his groove in the middle of the order and Glenn Maxwell and Alex Carey are the finishing act. Khawaja is looking a little lost but given the influence an opener can have on an ODI match, the defending champions will hope that Warner can learn a thing or two from Finch before it is too late.
Australia has won four and lost only once so far — against India — and are in prime position to make the semi-finals and that is where they will want both Finch and Warner to be at their absolute best. For now, one part of the puzzle has been solved. Will the other part be done in time as well?