SYDNEY: Australia coach Justin Langer hopes One-Day captain Aaron Finch will get the “breaks” he needs to turn around a lean summer.
Finch has made scores of 6 the first two ODIs against India — bowled by Bhuvneshwar Kumar both times — to leave him with a top score of 41 in five One-Dayers this season as well as his low returns in Tests, which cost him his place for the final Test against India, and the preceding T20Is, where he managed 62 runs in four matches.
The last thing Australia need heading into the World Cup is their captain to be short of runs, amid the other questions that need answering about the side, and Langer believes he is still adjusting to having played all formats in a short space of time.
“There’s not a lot of players who play all three forms of the game now,” Langer said. “This is brand new territory for him. He’s captain of the white-ball teams and playing Test cricket. He won’t be far off. When he gets going, he scores 100s.
“He’s working so hard on it. He just needs a few breaks. Every now and then you need a little break, and he’ll be away again.”
While Finch’s downturn in limited-over may be attributed to his stint in the Test side and his acknowledgement that it led to him over-training, one player who has been able to divorce the formats is Shaun Marsh and Langer lauded him as having the makings of a great One-Day batsman after his 131.
Marsh’ century on a sweltering day was his fourth ODI hundred in eight innings and his average of 42.32 is currently the seventh best for an Australia batsman with at least 50 ODI innings — sitting between the banned duo of David Warner and Steven Smith.
Ultimately Marsh’s century was not enough as Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni masterminded India’s series-levelling chase with four balls to spare — all four of his recent hundreds have come in defeat — but at a time when gains have been hard to find in Australia’s white-ball cricket he is a major tick for Langer who was proud of how Marsh responded to his Test axing.
