David Warner reveals valuable advice to Aaron Finch ahead of match-winning partnership

Australian opener David Warner revealed how his suggestion to Aaron Finch changed the latter’s performance in the first T20I against Sri Lanka at the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo. Finch has been vulnerable against the new ball for the last one to two years, and his form at the top of the order has been up and down. He had a poor ODI series against Pakistan, however, a fifty in the one-off T20I did look like he found a way out of his troubles.

However, he did not have the best of times in IPL 2022 and started to falter again with his feet not moving. In the first T20I against Sri Lanka, he survived a close LBW call with an inside edge and looked shaky at the start again. However, he went on to play a swashbuckling inning of an unbeaten 61 off 40 deliveries which included four sixes and four fours. His opening partner Warner who has been in the exquisite form opened up on the message he sent up to Finch which helped massively.

Aaron Finch was probably moving a little too much: David Warner

Warner mentioned that he advised Finch not to walk into the ball and let the ball do the talking in terms of its swing. He noted the importance of staying still, which helps in getting full contact and explained to Finch how he was moving a lot in the crease. He added that he has always been there when his skipper needs support and felt that Finch will be quite destructive when he keeps it simple.

“[I just said] not to walk out into the ball, let the ball do the work in the air. If they want to bowl nice and full, if you stay still, keep that leg-stump line, you are going to hit full contact with the ball. He was probably moving a little too much, was walking straight into the ball, and was still moving at the time of the delivery. You don’t really want to do that unless you are charging. Just kept in touch with him, I always do, we support each other as much as we can. If we see little things we try to help out by dropping a message,” Warner was quoted as saying by Cricbuzz.

Warner described Finch’s innings which comprised of slog sweeps and straight hits down the ground and was delighted to watch it from the other end. The duo added an unbeaten 134-run partnership for the opening wicket to win the game for Australia by ten wickets in the first T20I.

“For Finchy, it’s about keeping it simple and not moving too much around the crease. He looked to hit down the ground [when] the ball was in his area, he looked to hit his slog sweeps which he’s very, very good at. You could see his energy was a lot different, running between wickets, he was up and about. It was great to see,” he added.