What is the best T20 XI in world cricket at the moment?

Openers

Aaron Finch is one of the world's most destructive batsmen.

Our first opener was a relatively easy choice. While Babar Azam is world number one, he is less experienced than the other candidates and has a poorer six hitting ability so we chose Rohit Sharma. Rohit Sharma has been incredible in recent times in both limited-overs formats, managing to hit 115 against South Africa and 89 in a T20I against Bangladesh as well as having a more than satisfactory Champions Trophy, which is a very cut-throat top quality tournament. Rohit Sharma also always seems to be able to quickly transfer ODI form to T20Is and vice versa, as seen with his IPL form translating into a fantastic Champions Trophy and a fantastic South Africa ODI series translating into a brilliant Nidahas Trophy. Another important feature of Rohit Sharma's game is his experience. He has hit over 7,000 T20 runs since his debut in 2007. Rohit's classical approach has tempted us to pick a more naturally aggressive opening partner, ruling out players like Babar Azam joining him as well as the more classical batsmen Shikhar Dhawan and Hashim Amla to join him.

The second choice for an aggressive partner was incredibly difficult. Two of the contenders were Quinton de Kock and Fakhar Zaman but ultimately the choice came down to Martin Guptill or Aaron Finch. Despite Martin Guptill's recent form, his less than reliable batting when facing spin suggested we should go with Aaron Finch, which also has positives as he has really hit form recently. Finch has been a regular in the Australia team for about five years, managing to hit 1206 runs at an average of 40.20, with a strike rate of 151.69, in 36 T20Is since his debut in 2011, including a brilliant 156 against England. While the Victoria batsman hit two hundreds and a sixty against England in the three ODIs he played, more importantly Finch was among the runs in the T20s as well with scores of 20*, 36* and 18*, all in quick time, batting at 5. A good IPL in 2018 will further solidify his status as a consistent world class T20 batsman after his recent consistency.