‘Finchy is not lasting 10 seconds’: Michael Clarke turns the heat on Australian captain Aaron Finch

Finch had scored an unconvincing 42-ball 31 against Sri Lanka and the game against England was washed out.

“I thought if the Sri Lankans can get this ball in the right area while it’s new, we could be under the pump and we were. But even still, if that’s England’s bowling attack, if that’s India and Pakistan’s bowling attack that I watched the other night, if that’s South Africa’s bowling attack, Finchy is not lasting 10 seconds because he played and missed and balls went over the stumps,” Clarke told on Sky Sports Radio.

“Sri Lanka bowled too short. With 160 on the board, if Sri Lanka get their length right and even though we were under the pump without Marcus Stoinis’ amazing innings, I think we could have been in even more trouble.”

Earlier, ahead of the game that was washed out against England, Allan Border and Mark Waugh had picked their playing XI’s. Border dropped Finch, and Waugh had him down in the middle order. Both wanted Cameron Green at the top.

“I just think that Finch is really struggling and where he is batting (opening), in a virtual knockout game. I think we can do better with Smith at the top of order, or even Cameron Green. A tough call but I think it’s needed,” Border had said.

Waugh explained his rationale thus: “Green will open the batting instead of Finch and Finch can float down the order anywhere between 5-8. Go get ‘em.”

Finch, however, found support from the coach Andrew McDonald. “He’s really important to us in terms of connecting the strategy of what we want to do, and his captaincy record in big tournaments has been pretty good,” McDonald said. So we feel as though that captaincy is a real benefit for us. So, we’re not prepared to shift that at this stage.”