Chasing 134 against Royal Challengers Bangalore on Thursday night (April 27), Gujarat Lions were staring down the barrel when both their openers- Brendon McCullum and Ishan Kishan- returned to the hut with only 23 runs on the board.
Another wicket at that point would have surely sent the Lions’ dressing-room into dizzy but what happened thereafter left one and all stunned.
Aaron Finch joined Suresh Raina in the middle after the dismissal of McCullum and completely changed the course of the match with an extraordinary power-hitting. Without bothering about the ifs and buts, the hard-hitting Australia opener took the attack to the opposition right from the word go and raced to a blistering 22-ball half-century to help his team chase down the total with over six overs remaining.
The right-handed batsman scored 72 runs off just 34 balls and by the time he got out, his team needed only 20 runs from 47 deliveries.
Speaking after the match, Finch revealed the reason behind his attacking approach.
“Sometimes, in a small run chase, you can make the mistake of trying to bat slowly, and before you know, the run rate is 7, 8, 9 an over,” Finch said at the post-match conference. “It was a conscious effort to attack. We were just trying to get ahead of the run rate. So even if something did happen, there were a couple of guys behind myself and Suresh – Jadeja, Faulkner, Dinesh Karthik… if something went wrong, we could still pick up the pieces.”
Moreover, with his team’s season on the line, as they have managed just three wins in first eight matches, the net run-rate can come into play towards the end of the league stage. Languishing at the bottom with an NRR of -0.844, Lions have now risen two places with a net run rate of -0.360.
“At this stage, you still got to keep winning games,” Finch said. “If you’re in a position where you can really accelerate and make sure you finish as quickly as possible, it’s great. We’re lucky we got into a position like that tonight.”
He further stated that the wickets of Chris Gayle and Virat Kohli in the powerplay was a huge bonus. With the Chinnaswamy pitch offering good bounce, Nathu Singh and Basil Thampi made a good start, keeping the dangerous Chris Gayle and Virat Kohli in check before Thampi accounted for the latter.
One ball later, Andrew Tye sent back Gayle and Travis Head on successive deliveries to reduce the home side to 22 for three.
“Anytime you take wickets in the Powerplay, it’s a huge bonus,” Finch said. “That’s just a part of the game that we’ve been missing. When we were down with pressure, we saw some misfields and a couple of catches going down in the past, but today was a pretty polished performance, and we saw some young quicks, Nathu and Basil, really stand up with the new ball against some of the best players to have ever played this format.”
When asked about the reason behind sending Ishan Kishan to open the innings, Finch said:
“We knew that they’d open with Badree, Chahal has been bowling in the Powerplay and Pawan Negi as well. It was a case of having a left-hander at the top.”
Expressing his delight over the team combination, Finch stated that his team is very confident of doing well.
“Coming to a place like Bangalore where the ball can travel around, to bring in the experience of James Faulkner was a good move. Obviously, he bowled beautifully.
“It was a very good performance from the team tonight. We’ve put ourselves in this position by being poor in a couple of games. We’re still very confident, though. We have a good side, but time will tell,” he concluded.