Australia vs India 2018: Ricky Ponting Questions the Strategy of Opening the Innings With Aaron Finch

Former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting has raised questions regarding the strategy of opening the innings with Aaron Finch. Ponting believes as Finch had done a good job while opening the innings in the UAE against Pakistan, he was an automatic choice for the opening position in Australia. However, it is well known Finch has had his issues against the moving ball.

Consequently, Ponting feels that Finch played a rash shot when he went for the booming cover drive on the third ball of the innings. It wasn’t an ideal shot as Finch had to pay the price of going with hard hands as Ishant Sharma castled his stumps.

Finch played a rash shot.

“I think this problem has been created by picking him to open in the UAE. It’s the easiest place in the world to be an opening batsman over there, as we know. And he did reasonably well over there which meant they had to pick him to open the batting coming back here.

“What was the long-term objective to open the batting with him over there? Everyone knows he struggles a little bit against moving the red ball and we have a series here and an Ashes series not too far away, and the ball’s going to move around a lot when we’re over in England.

Thus, it was a bad shot that Aaron Finch tried to play. In fact, the Australian opener isn’t in the best of forms in the recent past. Ponting said it was not a shot that an opener should try to play early on in the innings.

“The shot we saw today is not what a good Test match opener should do on the third ball of the innings. The new ball on that wicket was always going to be the hardest time to bat and he went for a hard cover drive. Sometimes that can happen, but he’s got a lot of work to do, I think,” Ponting told cricket.com.au.

Meanwhile, Aaron Finch will like to come up with a solid performance in the second innings. Finch has done a good job in the limited overs format and will like to carry the same in the red ball version. It is still young days for Finch in the multi-day format as he is playing his third Test match. Thus, he is expected to get better with experience.