Adelaide: Australia captain Aaron Finch revealed on Thursday he has a 70 per cent chance of playing against Afghanistan in the side’s final Group 1 match in Men’s T20 World Cup at Adelaide Oval on Friday. But at the same time, Finch was firm in mentioning that if he feels pain in his hamstring or anything else around it, he won’t play in the match.
“Maybe 70/30. But I’ll test it out probably this afternoon to make sure that I’m not hindering the side at all leading into the game because I think that’s the worst possible scenario is that you leave the guys short out there with one player fewer,” said Finch in the pre-match press conference.
With hints around him potentially playing his final T20I match for Australia after having retired from ODIs, Finch quashed that sentiment coming into play for deciding to feature in Friday’s match.
“It won’t make it harder one bit. If I feel like it 1 per cent would be compromising the side’s performance, I won’t play. If I don’t feel confident in my hamstring, then I won’t play. That might be in the first effort that I do today, might be in the last one. If I feel any pain or anything like that, I won’t play.”
Both Finch and Tim David had pulled their hamstrings in Australia’s Super 12 match against Ireland and didn’t field for a majority of the second half of the innings. Finch confirmed that David’s scene is very similar to his: a fitness test deciding the fate for participation in Friday’s match.
“He’s in exactly the same boat. He’ll get worked out today, and we’ll know more during training, I guess, the likelihood of both of us playing, one of us, neither of us, whatever it looks like, but exactly the same. You don’t want to compromise the team’s performance by having a guy go down who comes in with a niggle. That’ll just be one of the things we go through, as well, and make sure it’s all ticked off this afternoon.”
With Australia needing to defeat Afghanistan by a very big margin to have a slim chance of entering the semi-finals and then wait for the result of England’s last match against Sri Lanka on Saturday to see if they are in the last four or not, Finch disclosed that the defending champions hadn’t talked about net run rate scenarios.
“Not as a team we haven’t. I’ve talked through it a little bit with the coach. We went through it this morning briefly. Like I said (in the) last game, you still have to earn the right to be able to push for a net run rate because the last thing that you want to happen is you push too hard.”
“You compromise the two points, and then potentially something happened in the Sri Lanka-England game and you leave yourself vulnerable. But, there’s obviously some scenarios there that we need to keep an eye on throughout the game, that if we get in a good position that we can maximise it.”
In the win over Ireland, Australia had used left-arm pacer Mitchell Starc as a first-change bowler instead of handing him the new ball. That proved to be a masterstroke as Starc rattled the stumps of Ireland batters Curtis Camper and George Dockrell with vicious inswingers.
“We feel as though he’s got a really important role through the middle part of the innings, and particularly with Adam Zampa who’s been really good for a long time now. In T20 — well, same as one-day cricket, if you don’t get wickets through that middle phase of the game, you are incredibly vulnerable at the back end, regardless of who’s bowling.”
“You could have the best two ever, and if you’ve got two set batters, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to contain them. It’s been a little change in Mitch’s role to be pushing harder through the middle overs and almost going towards the back end of the powerplay so that we can try and get a wicket there to expose a middle order right on the back of that. That’s the only reason for it,” concluded Finch.
–IANS