As compared to the other batsmen in the first ODI, Aaron Finch didn’t find any difficulties in the middle, but that wasn’t enough to stop him from slamming the pitch used for the game against Sri Lanka. The Australian opener was critical about the strip at Colombo as batting and run making was incredibly hard on a slow and docile wicket.
The brawny right hander mentioned that he had never come across a pitch that assisted the spinners to such a colossal extent. The nature of the wicket was well considered by the hosts as their ploy to play quite a few spinners almost did the trick. With so much of spin on offer, the batting was bound to take a hit as stroke making was far from an easy task.
“I don’t think I’ve ever played on a wicket that spun that much,” Finch said. “It was a pretty poor wicket I think. For balls to be going through the top from the second over – Josh Hazlewood to Tillakaratne Dilshan – for the second over of the game, I think that was pretty poor. We played well to track down that total. It seemed like a different spinner was bowling every over. They’ve got plenty of options and we played exceptionally well with the bat to get across the line.”
The opener, who struck a fine half-century despite difficult circumstances, added that as the ball got older, batting got tougher. “I think the way that the game panned out, we noticed that as soon as the ball got a bit older, it started to spin quite big and it wasn’t coming on to the bat. We just made a call to try and take on the new ball. Generally in the subcontinent that is the way to play. It came off today for a little bit, so it was nice to get the team off to a flyer. I think that’s generally the way that games go on wickets that are so slow and low,” Finch said.
However, he did say that the wickets besides the one on which the game was played, were decent enough. “The ones next to it that we’ve been training on have been pretty good wickets. They started to spin a bit yesterday – late yesterday. I don’t think I’ve seen any wickets that have spun to that extreme – particularly in a one-day game. I suppose the wickets that we trained on were probably not very similar, to be fair,” Finch concluded.