Aaron Finch is one of the most destructive openers in international cricket. However, the Australian has never been able to take the IPL by storm – average of 25, at a strike rate of 128 in 91 IPL matches.
Yet, teams do tend to tilt towards the Aussie white-ball captain. Kolkata Knight Riders roped Finch as a replacement for Alex Hales, who pulled out citing bubble fatigue. So far in 4 IPL 2022 games for KKR, Finch has registered scores of 7, 58, 3 and 4. He has played one good innings but failed in the other three.
Former KKR leg-spinner Piyush Chawla has observed something interesting regarding Finch: that the opener has struggled against left-arm pacers; he’s been dismissed by Marco Jansen and Chetan Sakariya while tall bowlers Prasidh Krishna and Kuldeep Sen have also dismissed the Australian.
Chawla felt that Finch “doesn’t want to” face the left-arm seamers and has been trying to get off the strike whenever possible.
“My personal opinion on Aaron Finch is he did get runs in one match but even then when he saw left-arm seamers, he was running after defending to the fielders’ hands. It feels like he doesn’t want to play left-arm seamers at all, just wants to get to the other end,” Chawla told ESPNcricinfo.
Hold the pose, @AaronFinch5
#KKRHaiTaiyaar #IPL2022 pic.twitter.com/bGQlCCIWov
— KolkataKnightRiders (@KKRiders) May 1, 2022
In 10 matches till now, KKR have used five different opening pairs and Finch himself has had three different opening partners. KKR started the season with Venkatesh Iyer and Ajinkya Rahane and when the latter’s form dropped, Rahahe was dropped for Finch. With Venkatesh also struggling for runs, he was shifted to the middle-order as Sam Billings and Sunil Narine were tried as openers.
Baba Indrajith and Aaron Finch is KKR’s latest opening combo used against RR on Monday after Venkatesh was dropped from the eleven. Piyush Chawla though opined that Finch isn’t KKR’s best opener and they can do better by bringing back Rahane and replacing Finch with an overseas to bolster other areas.
“I can’t say that [Finch]he’s a good option and they shall go back to their original openers,” the veteran leg-spinner added.
After five consecutive losses, KKR are back to winning ways with their 7-wicket win over Rajasthan. They have 8 points in 10 matches and need to win all their four games to confirm a playoff spot.
