Aaron Finch’s Striker Rate is a Talking Point

Aaron Finch’s strike rate the other night in Colombo was head and shoulders above the rest.


In fact, nobody apart from him took lesser balls to score more runs in his innings. But, post-match, the opener rated the Colombo deck the worst he had ever seen in a shorter format game.

According to Finch, for the deck to produce uneven bounce from the same length within the first eight or ten deliveries and then spin from the leg to the off stump and vice versa, it was for sure a low standard deck.

Sri Lanka had a couple of medium pacers and a part time off spinner bowling inside the first 10 and Finch thrived on it smashing the ball to the cow corner regularly to race along to his fifty.

Finch says the spin was always going to take control with the soft ball later. So, boundaries had to come against pace at the start. That’s why, he was after the bowlers straightaway and luckily, he was able to connect all the shots from the meat of the willow.

While Finch did end up a hero, there was an absolute villain moment for him during the hosts’ innings when he couldn’t hold on a lollypop on the boundary in the leg side which could have given Jimmy Faulkner the first wicket of his spell. Recalling that, Finch says he couldn’t judge the trajectory of the shot because of the sunlight coming direct into his eyes.

The dropped batter scored a half-century, but, Faulkner scalped him eventually and had a total of four scalps by the evening. Finch reckons because Faulkner uses wrists as well as fingers for slowing down his deliveries, he proves to be very deceptive for a batter.