Aaron Finch's Destiny Is In His Own Hands - Mark Waugh Laments The Australian Skipper's Poor Form

Former Australia batsman, Mark Waugh opines that Aaron Finch’s poor run of form is hurting the Australian team as him being the captain of the side makes him nigh-undroppable keeping other players out of the eleven.

Aaron Finch scored 12 runs off 14 balls in Australia’s chase of 220 against New Zealand in Dunedin in a high-scoring encounter where over 400 runs were scored.

The opener is carrying the baggage for plenty of months now – he could manage only 179 runs in 13 Big Bash games at a strike rate of 113.29 as his side Melbourne Renegades finished at the bottom of the table. Indeed, Aaron Finch has not scored a fifty in his last 26 T20 innings.

He has been not great with his captaincy either, with Australia losing their previous two T20I series against India and New Zealand, and trailing by 2-0 to New Zealand with 3 games left in the series. He also went unsold at the IPL 2021 Auction after being released by RCB following his disappointing show last season.

No batsman is immune from being dropped: Mark Waugh

Mark Waugh says that Finch, who was given the white-ball captaincy after the ban to Steve Smith, is someone who will be given a longer rope – but is not undroppable if he doesn’t get back to form considering an important T20 World Cup later in the year.

Waugh points out that there are other candidates who can take the leadership armband – Steve Smith is also now eligible to lead Australia again – and several batsmen who can replace the 34-year-old opener.

David Warner and Smith are rested from the New Zealand series, and they will slot in straight away; Matthew Wade and Josh Philippe have been in good form while D Arcy Short waits for his opportunity.

“His job is to score runs. It doesn’t matter; there’s a lot of players who can captain. There’s Matthew Wade; there’s Mitch Marsh; there’s Moises Henriques. His primary job is to score runs, particularly when you’re opening. That’s a key position in T20 cricket, and we’ve got a lot of good players on the periphery to open. He’ll know it,”Mark Waugh told Fox Cricket.

“No batsman is immune from being dropped when you’re not scoring runs. Doesn’t matter if you’re captain or not. I’m not saying it (Finch getting dropped) will happen, but no one’s irreplaceable. There’s no way the selectors will want to drop him, but his destiny is in his own hands,” the 55-year-old added.

Also Read: India vs England 2021: Alastair Cook Takes A Dig At Virat Kohli After The Indian Captain Termed The Pitch As ‘Very Good’