The current period is the transition period for most of the top ranked international cricket teams, wherein some of the legends, established, and marquee players who are in their mid-30s are on their way out and selectors are looking to bud in young blood.
One such transition which seems to have been finalized by the New Zealand selectors and their team management is Finn Allen taking over the opener’s role from Martin Guptill in white-ball cricket, with Devon Conway already pushing out Colin Munro a couple of years ago.
Martin Guptill was once the leading T20I men’s run-scorer. He’s amassed over 3500 T20I runs at a strike rate of 135 and had clattered 2 centuries and 20 fifties. In the league of T20I greats is Martin Guptill, and nobody can take that tag away from him.
Finn Allen, though, has usurped Martin Guptill’s opening position.
The 23-year-old Finn Allen is amongst the most exciting, dangerous, intent-filled opening batsmen in the world.
Live by the sword, die by the sword is Finn Allen’s mantra. His first three T20I innings suggested it all: 0(1), 17(10) and 71(29). What has helped Finn Allen is the security now given to him by the New Zealand team management; the freedom to go out there and express himself, to bash the leather out of the cricket ball; to intimidate even the best of the bowlers in the world.
Which is what exactly he did when he strode out in his first T20 World Cup 2022 match against Australia. Allen took the famed Australian pace attack with a pinch of salt and smashed 42 runs off only 16 balls, setting up for a big New Zealand total.
As terrific as Martin Guptill was in T20Is – and he was Good – he didn’t have this kind of presence in the last phase of his career. This – the lust of an impactful knock, a belligerent strike rate, the want to put fear in the bowlers’ mind – is what modern T20 asks from the openers. This is what Finn Allen brings to the table.
