Aaron Finch laments Australia's poor catching against India in recent matches
Australian T20 skipper Aaron Finch has expressed his worry at his side’s poor catching in the first T20 against India on Tuesday which the visitors won by 37 runs, cricket.com.au reports. The 29-year-old is, however, hopeful that his players will be able to address the problem at the earliest and labelled the bizarre fielding off late as ‘contagious’.
Australia are considered one of the best fielding units around the world but the past three matches have been a big let down compared to their high standards, especially when it came to taking catches. The hosts gifted Indian opener Rohit Sharma two lives during the loss at Adelaide – one while he was batting at 4 with Kane Richardson dropping him at the fine-leg boundary while he was later dropped on 23 by Cameron Boyce at short third-man.
The reigning World Champions also missed three gilt-edged opportunities in the fifth and final ODI at Sydney – factors which have highly contributed to the hosts losses in those two matches while they were also guilty of missing several opportunities during their narrow victory over Dhoni’s men at Manuka Oval in Canberra last Wednesday.
All we need to recover is for somebody to pull off a half-chance: Finch
Following the defeat at Sydney, Australian ODI skipper Steven Smith had said that the fielding was a major reason for the loss and Finch has now followed suit labelling the current fielding situation as something that had to be dealt with soon.
"We didn't help ourselves with our catching, it is something that we have seriously got to look at," Finch said. "It is two games in a row now, in two different formats, that has let us down."
Finch feels that the current trend might be due to a lack of confidence as the fielders have been catching well in the net sessions. The Australian opener believes that all will be back to normal once a fielder latches on to a half-chance as it could lift the dampened spirit in the squad at the moment.
"At the end of the day, no-one means to drop them," he said. "Everyone trains hard, everyone caught them beautifully at practice. It's just one of those things that is a little bit contagious at the moment. All you need is someone to pull off a half-chance and everyone is back up and about again."
Finch and the Australian team management would certainly be hoping to put things back on track in the remaining two T20Is of the series to be played on Friday and Sunday in Melbourne and Sydney respectively.