Melbourne: Aaron Finch says he wasn’t surprised that selectors dropped him from the Test side before giving him a chance in the middle order, suggesting that cutting him would have been an easy call for the panel to make. Opening up publicly for the first time since he was axed ahead of the fourth Test against India, Finch said he barely picked up a bat for a week after he failed in the second innings of the Boxing Day Test, having been drained by an unrelenting schedule in which he at one stage spent just 12 days at home in eight months.
Finch’s Test career could be over after a dismal series against India. Following his scores of eight and three at the MCG, there were calls for him to be demoted to the middle order – where he bats for Victoria – rather than be dumped from the XI. However Finch, who made his Test debut for Australia in the UAE only three months ago, said the call to drop him for the SCG Test was justified.
“I hadn’t got any runs,” Finch said after leading the Melbourne Renegades to a win over Hobart on Monday night. “That’s the reality. Two 50s in five Tests. I said this before when I got dropped from the one-day team, you’d like to have some bullets to fire back but there’s just none when you’ve made two 50s and average 16 for the series. I think it would have been a pretty easy call to be fair.”