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Packed schedule to help Finch find form

3 minute read

Under-pressure captain Aaron Finch is keen to take advantage of Australia's flurry of white-ball fixtures to emerge from his career-threatening form slump.

AARON FINCH of Australia.
AARON FINCH of Australia. Picture: Michael Dodge/Getty Images

Australian white-ball captain Aaron Finch is confident a flurry of games can help him push through a career-threatening form slump ahead of the home Twenty20 World Cup.

Finch has been under pressure after a tough IPL stint at Kolkata Knight Riders, where he made 86 runs in five knocks, compounding a miserable run with the bat for his country.

Australia will play 11 one-day internationals and 11 T20 matches, not including warm-up games, ahead of October's home T20 World Cup, starting with next weeks' series in Sri Lanka.

"(I need to) just get some more runs. It's been a reasonably lean patch. I've been through that plenty of times in my career," Finch said.

"At times, you go through stages where you get a heap of runs in a hurry and then go through some lean patches. But that's a part of it.

"I mean, it's something to look forward to.

"It's 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 - I haven't played a huge amount of that over the 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 was under similar pressure ahead of the 2019 ODI World Cup but allayed concerns with strong lead-in form against India and Pakistan and will be hoping to replicate that this year.

The 35-year-old played down his lean IPL stint, noting he'd tried to "go a little bit too hard", and said he'd been focused on correcting his technique.

"My technique started to get a little bit too open," he said.

"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

"Just trying to get back to a little bit more square and making sure I'm giving myself every chance to get through the first five or six balls and then in T20 and ODIs it flows on from that."

Early-season cricket will be played in Townsville and Cairns against Zimbabwe and New Zealand respectively, before Australia leave for a three-match T20 series in India.

While the Far North Queensland games clash with The Hundred in England, Finch has dismissed concerns over the availability of players including Glenn Maxwell, Adam Zampa and Marcus Stoinis.

"Playing cricket for Australia's the priority and don't think there'll be any issues there," he said.

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