While the 25-year-old right-arm Australian pacer Pat Cummins is returning to the international squad after recovering from an injury, he believes that the new Australian ODI captain Aaron Finch is a perfect choice.
Recently, the 14-man Australian ODI squad has been announced for the upcoming three-match home ODI series against South Africa, where Aaron Finch has been appointed as the ODI captain who replaced Tim Paine for that role. Pacer Pat Cummins has been also included in this ODI series, who played his last international cricket match in this April and just recently returns to the professional cricket after recovering from the injury.
Cummins feels Finch is the perfect choice for the ODI captaincy role due to his fearless mindset. Since the leadership resignations from Steven Smith and David Warner after the Cape Town Test ball-tampering scandal, Finch has taken the leadership role for the T20I side.
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Talking about the new Australian ODI skipper, Cummins said, “He’s (Aaron Finch) perfect for the job. You see how he bats, he’s quite fearless, he takes the game on. I think the trend in one-day cricket at the moment is you’ve got to be totally fearless, take the game on, relax. You might get smashed sometimes going for the 350-400 score but that’s the way it’s played.
“Hopefully he brings that to the team and has his own little spin on the team like any captain does. He’s someone who’s played a lot, knows the game really well and is a really good communicator. I’m sure he’ll be great in the role.”
After the Cape Town Test ball-tampering scandal, Tim Paine was appointed for the ODI leadership role, along with the Test leadership role. Under Paine’s captaincy, Australia lost the five-match ODI series against the hosts England in this July by the 5-0 margin. That havoc series defeat resulted Australia’s ODI ranking slipped down to no.6, their lowest in 34 years.
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Australia’s recent ODI performances are very poor as they have lost 16 out of their last 18 ODIs. However, Cummins is confident to change the situation quickly after returning some big match players in the squad.
Cummins elaborated on this, “I think you see in this team… Finch is one of the most in-form batsmen in the world at the moment for one-day cricket. You’ve got people like (Glenn) Maxwell, (Chris) Lynn, guys that can change the game in 10 overs.
“Mitchell Starc was the best player in the last World Cup and Josh Hazlewood has been No.1 (ODI bowler) in the world. We’ve got some real match-winners in the team, so all it takes is one or two of them to come off and the rest of us to be pretty consistent and we should go far.”
