Last Updated on 3 years by Charbel Coorey

Cricket News: “Hope to get people off my back” – Aaron Finch | Finch aims to get out of lean patch in upcoming tour of Sri Lanka

Aaron Finch is looking to overcome his self-proclaimed lean patch in the upcoming limited-overs tour of Sri Lanka. Finch scored only 86 runs in five games for the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in IPL 2022 and has notched a solitary half-century in his last 14 T20Is for Australia.

The Aussies are set to play 11 ODIs and T20Is each prior to embarking on their title defence of the World T20 at home later this year. Finch seems to keen address concerns over his poor form but admits that he has faced such a situation several times in his career so far.

“It’s been a reasonably lean patch. I’ve been through that plenty of times in my career. At times, you go through stages where you get a heap of runs in a hurry and then go through some lean patches,” the Australian white-ball skipper was quoted in a report by ESPNCricinfo.

“A lot of time to build form” – Aaron Finch

He added, “With such a busy schedule of cricket, there’s a lot of time to be able to build and I suppose get back into the groove of one-day cricket especially. We haven’t played a huge amount of that over the last little while, so it’d be really nice to try and get some big runs and keep everyone off my back for a little while.”

Finch even spoke in detail about his technique, mentioning that he has been trying to regain his rhythm by altering with his set-up and movement patterns for quite some time. In the series vs Pakistan, prior to the IPL, Finch said that was getting too open in his stance. Then he started “trying to go a little too hard” during the IPL by moving around the crease. Now, he is looking to settle for a better base in the series vs Sri Lanka.

“When you’re worried about the ball swinging back into your front pad, you can tend to open up which then has a bit of a flow-on effect. So it’s just trying to get back to a little bit more square and making sure that I’m giving myself every chance to get through the first five or six balls and then in T20 or ODIs you can sort of flow on from that,” Finch explained.

“They’re obviously your most vulnerable times. But just squaring up my technique again. I was just a bit open and hips and shoulders and feet and everything and just lost the ability to transfer my weight back through the ball,” the 35-year-old further elaborated on the issue.

Meanwhile, Australia is looking to play around its bowling combination a bit in the absence of Pat Cummins and Adam Zampa in the Sri Lankan series. The first T20I between the two sides will take place at the R. Premdasa Stadium in Colombo on 7^th June. The ODI series will commence from 14^th June with the first of the five games to be played at the Pallekele International Stadium in Kandy.