T20 World Cup 2022: Skipper Aaron Finch’s form is being discussed but no changes yet
Aaron Finch’s deceptively dangerous innings the other night could have batted Australia out of the game. That’s why Robert Craddock says the captain only has one avenue open to him.
Australian cricket fans used to playfully poke fun at England for choosing out-of-form cricket captains without ever fully realising what it all meant.
It’s not until the problem is yours, as it is now with Aaron Finch, you fully get how many ugly tentacles are attached to the issue.
Everything stops. Countless selection theories are floated — and most make sense — but if the skipper isn’t moving nothing happens.
Finch’s international career will end at the conclusion of the World Cup.
Unless he calls it quits in the next week or two, it appears Finch will battle on to the end because Australia traditionally dislikes making changes mid-tournament even though it is known there have been high level discussions over Finch’s place in the team.
When the captain of a cricket team wobbles, the side wobbles around him.
The shadow of Finch slump is cast over everything around it as will be proved in Friday’s T20 World Cup against England where Australia is likely to field an unchanged batting line-up.
Some experts have advocated promoting Steve Smith and dropping Tim David.
But Finch looks in worse form than David so that would be unfair.
There’s nothing wrong with Mark Waugh’s selection of swapping Cameron Green with Pat Cummins and employing the youngster as an opener.
But that would mean sliding Finch down the order. Putting him down the list would simply transfer the problem from one part of the order to another.
Allan Border would like to see a straight Finch-Smith swap. But Finch is going nowhere it seems so neither is the sidelined Smith.
White ball form slumps offer tricky challenges for tightly wound mind of an out of form batsman.
Many a struggling Test batsman has heard the words “go and make some ugly runs”. It’s a challenge to scratch and claw and chisel away to a dignified fighting 50. There’s glory in the scrap.
But while ugly runs are worn like a badge of honour in Tests, they are like a torpedo midships to T20 careers. Real match killers.
Finch’s laborious 31 not out off 42 balls against Sri Lanka was a deceptively dangerous innings for Australia because had it not been for a late flurry he could have batted his team out of the game.
There a times in T20 cricket when a batsman hurts his side less by getting a first ball duck than he does by batting slowly.
This raises the question of how Finch should bat for the rest of the tournament.
Once, when in the middle of a lengthy form slump, Australian captain Mark Taylor swung like a rusty gate in a 50 over innings against South Africa, saying later he was in such poor form he decided he had nothing to lose.
Finch has reached this point.
Australia don’t need him to chug along and make 20 off 25 against England.
He must go hard or go home.
Kohli has six gears, Smith four: It’s that simple
Virat Kohli may have destroyed Pakistan but hidden in the rubble lay many lessons for a creaky Australian team trying to defend their World Cup.
Australia was still reeling in dismay over its woeful innings of 111 against New Zealand on Saturday when Kohli stepped out at the MCG against Pakistan for the greatest white ball innings of his career, 82 not out off 53 balls.
Everything Australia lacked on Saturday Kohli produced 24 hours later and while the pressure on the Australian batsmen was greater due the fact they were chasing 41 more for victory than India there was much to learn from the master’s finest work.
First came the way he patiently slipped into the fight, absorbing some high class bowling.
No shot he played in his first 23 balls produced more than two runs as he lobbed along in first gear.
Kohli paced himself beautifully. It was a reminder to Australia’s batsmen, as they resume their Cup campaign against Sri Lanka in Perth on Tuesday, to use their gears. These high pressure games are not all fire and brimstone.
After Kohli’s innings there were calls to recall Steve Smith because like Kohli, he has the class and skills to adjust to the tempo required and isn’t simply consumed with hitting a ball from Perth to Fremantle.
It sounds good in theory except Smith in white ball cricket is not Kohli. Smith has four gears. Kohli has five or six.
If you want to argue that Smith should return to the Australian team you can compare his measured style to Kane Williamson — but Kohli is next level.
Then there was the way Kohli proved you don’t have to throw away the text book and become the King of Funk to score runs at a furious pace.
Even when the run chase was more than two runs a ball Kohli never lost his “shape.’
His most vicious work is often surprisingly orthodox.
His footwork is electric but he is not a big one for ramp shots or switch hits or extravagant movements of the Glenn Maxwell variety.
When India needed 48 of 18 balls Kohli whittled down the target with some power packed pull shots and thumps down the ground where his head stayed still and his balance was superb.
Another lesson to Australia was the importance of swing bowling in this tournament. Swing may be one of cricket’s most old-fashioned skills but it felt as modern as a microchip over the weekend.
New Zealand’s bowlers are fine exponents of it and Indian duo Bhuveneshwar Kumar and Arshdeep Singh had the ball hooping around so well Pakistan could barely lay bat on ball in the opening overs.
It was a reminder to Australian captain Aaron Finch of the great challenge that awaits him if Australia and India meet in the finals but that is a still a long way off for an Australian team who may find that defending their title is harder than winning it in the first place.
‘UNFORGETTABLE’ KOHLI IGNITES WORLD CUP
It took just one night of pure passion to prove why this is the greatest cricket show on earth – and its greatest tragedy.
Kohli started in first gear, poking along at less than a run a ball pace like your family car stuck in traffic.
Then he hit the open road for a while with some scattered boundaries before pulling back into the left lane for a few overs as the run rate soared beyond two a ball which four overs left.
And the, he took us back in time by opening the garage door and wheeling out the Ferrari and roaring off to help snatch a dam-busting 31 off the last 12 and 16 off the last over which he managed amid huge drama as Pakistan crumbled under pressure with India winning off the last ball.
It’s all cream now for the men in blue in this tournament – after just one game.
In many of their fans eyes, they have a pass mark for the tournament already by beating their loathed rivals in a match which engaged one fifth of the world’s population and was watched by one of the biggest television audiences in history.
When the two teams left the ground there was a feeling that the greatest match, moment, memory of the tournament may have already been delivered. It was that good. An instant classic. Unforgettable. The World Cup is officially ablaze.
In time the tournament winner’s name may be a head scratcher but India fans will never forget the night they took down Pakistan at the MCG. These matches sit in history like iconic Test matches.
Greg Chappell once said India versus Pakistan was the Ashes by a multiple of 100. If anything, he may he may have undersold it.
This fabulous contest only served to enhance the lingering sadness that these two magnificent rivals, entrenched in a long-running cold war which seems to get frostier by the decade, no longer meet in bilateral series.
In a dollar-driven cricket world filled with so many meaningless games, this was like a crown jewel being cut before our very eyes such was the passion and consequences of it.
If only it could happen more often. The game desperately needs more India-Pakistan games to remind the cricket world what these matches really mean.
In India on Sunday there were 80 million searches for the term “Melbourne weather.’’ Not Kohli. Not Rohit ... the weather.
Certainly the quiet, studied, serenity of the Ashes seemed a world away from the crazy-eyed intensity of this contest.
India and Pakistan were like two heavyweight boxers with blood dripping off them slugging it out in the 12th round simply refusing to lose.
First Pakistan stumbled badly against the swinging ball which wobbled early like a soap sud. They looked gone. Then they rose from the grave to the mediocrity of 8-159. Then India where eyebrow deep in quicksand at 4-31. Suddenly Hardik Pandya and Virat Kohli started hitting sixes and fours.
The game seemed to have a new favourite every two overs. Every ball seemed an event.
The sellout figure of 90,293 was reached in less than half an hour of sales, raising the question of how many tickets would have been sold with unlimited restriction – 200,000 maybe? – and what on earth that figure would it be in say, Mumbai.
People came not simply from interstate but from both competing nations for three hours of entertainment.
Indian Ravi Ashwin, the Mankad specialist who is both controversial and contrary, ignited a social media storm when he appeared to claim an outfield catch for a ball which bounced just before he scooped it up. As the storm raged around him Ashwin looked unfazed. It’s not the first drama he’s weathered and won’t be the last.
The thought of this match not going ahead was too much to bear. In some ways it didn’t matter who won. It happened. That was all it had to do. The drama looked after itself.
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