SYDNEY, (Reuters) – Australia have the ideal opportunity to arrest their slide with some aggressive cricket in the three-match Twenty20 series against India, limited-overs captain Aaron Finch said in Brisbane on Tuesday.
World champions in the 50-overs, Australia were whitewashed 5-0 by England in an one-day international series and lost 2-1 loss to South Africa at home earlier this month.
They have not won an ODI series since beating New Zealand 2-0 in 2016-17 and finished the calendar year with only two wins from 13 matches.
In the shortest format, they were blanked 3-0 by Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates and also lost a one-off T20 match against the Proteas on Saturday.
“We are still very confident in this (T20) format,” Finch told reporters on the eve of the series opener against India, who beat world champions West Indies 3-0 at home before landing in Australia.
“India have been in great form in all forms of the game for a long time now.
“It’s going to be a great opportunity for us to come out and express ourselves, play some aggressive, attacking cricket and take the game on and really try and take it to India.”
India captain Virat Kohli scored four hundreds during the team’s last trip Down Under but Finch said Australia would be foolish not to have plans against the touring side’s other batsmen.
“They’ve got dangerous guys all through,” the Australian opening batsman said, referring to the likes of Rohit Sharma.
“You’ve got guys who’ve made double hundreds in one-day cricket and played so much T20 cricket and are so experienced that if you take them for granted, they’ll hurt you badly.
“There’s obviously been a bit of focus around Virat, but no more than Rohit, Shikhar (Dhawan) or KL (Rahul), or any of these guys who can be as damaging as anyone on their day.”
Finch said bouncers could be the “go-to” delivery for his bowlers against the Indians more comfortable on slow and low surfaces back home.
“Most of the Indian guys have been here before and know what to expect, so with so much cricket being played these days it’s probably not as foreign as what it was going back some time,” he said.
“There’s an opportunity to use that as our go-to, no doubt. It’s going to be an exciting series, India are in great form, and we feel as though we’ve been building really nicely without the results going our way so far. It’ll be good fun.”
Australia will also need to bat well against the best Indian pace attack to have toured the country, he said.
“When you look at India in the past you might have seen it (pace) as a bit of a weak link, but now I think they have every base covered through their list.”
