Aaron Finch - Belligerent batter, captain par excellence and arguably Australia's best T20I cricketer

On Thursday, February 7, 2023, Aaron Finch announced that he would be retiring from T20Is, bringing down the curtains on an international career that was adorned by a couple of World Cup titles but also saw its fair share of highs and lows.

Highs and lows, though, were synonymous with how Finch was as a batter, especially in the shortest format. When he was on song, he was capable of annihilating even the best bowling attacks on the planet. As he got older, however, his batting was not as free-flowing and he often cut a frustrated figure.

Like most cricketers, his contributions should be viewed by how many times he was a part of Australia’s highest crests, and how, on occasions when he was not quite at his best, Australia seemed destined to fail. Such was his importance. Such was his impact.

Glance through his numbers quickly, and he has a claim to be one of the best T20I openers to have ever existed in the men’s game. He scored 3120 runs at an average of 34.28 and a strike rate of 142.53. Only 12 male cricketers (minimum 1000 runs scored) in history have scored at a quicker strike rate. Of those, only David Miller, Jos Buttler, and Suryakumar Yadav have better averages than Finch.

None, though, have two 150-plus scores to their name in T20Is. The former Australian captain, in fact, holds the record for the highest score ever in a T20I, and his 156 against England in 2013 is the third-best score ever registered by a male batter in an innings.

Finch, however, was more than just a batter. He took up the white-ball captaincy soon after the 2018 ball-tampering scandal, and at a time when Australian cricket was in turmoil. That hardly any questions were raised over his credentials, even when David Warner (a player perfectly cut out for white-ball captaincy) and Steve Smith returned to the fold, is a testament to how respected a figure he was in the dressing room.

The Finch-Warner combo also became a partnership that teams around the globe feared. When both hit their straps, there was not much opposition attacks could do. And even when they were not quite settling into their groove, their presence was enough to force them into mistakes.

Human nature, though, is very fickle. Quite often, we end up remembering things that happened recently while forgetting what someone has done in the past, irrespective of how vital a role that person played to get to a stage where things could be judged more objectively. Gratitude, thus, is not a very ubiquitous quality.

Finch, too, was a victim of that. The 2022 T20 World Cup did not turn out to be the crowning glory he had expected it to be. If anything, it ended up being the final straw for him – a moment that made him realize that he had expended all his T20I energy and that Australia needed someone else at the helm to take them to the promised land, again.

Similarly, if you pull up a list of the greatest Australian men’s captains, Finch might not figure in that conversation until very late. Talk about Australia’s most graceful stroke-makers ever, and Finch might get a fleeting mention, at best. Speak about consistency, and there will be several who have fared better than the Victorian.

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Aaron Finch led Australia to T20 World Cup glory in 2021

Finch, however, did what no other Australian men’s captain managed to do – win the T20 World Cup, filling the void in an otherwise glittering and packed trophy cabinet. He did that at a time when almost everyone had written Australia off, and there was skepticism around whether they had evolved as quickly as the format. That, then, must count for something, right?

His fiercest critics would say that he did not contribute massively to that triumph and that his only notable contribution was to win the toss in a tournament where the coin flip played a more pivotal role than it should have. That, though, is a very flimsy way to take the sheen off what Finch produced in the shortest format – both as a captain and as a marauding batter.

He might not have looked pretty most of the time. Towards the end especially, he scratched around and did not give off the vibe you would expect from a buccaneering opener. That he still ended up with a career strike rate of more than 140 and an average of a shade under 35 tells you just how good he was before perceivably hitting a barren spell in the twilight of his career.

Add all that up, and it does not take rocket science to conclude that he was, is, and will remain one of Australia’s greatest T20I players. He was fearless, he was tactically astute and for a significant chunk of his career, he had an aura about him. As long as he was at the crease, teams were in trepidation for the destruction he could cause.

Finch had that. Only a very few do.