Former Australia skipper Aaron Finch says captaincy was a bit difficult in the Indian Premier League (IPL) than any other cricket formats. Finch was a demanding batter of his time who played for nine IPL franchises. He recalled the challenges he faced in communicating with everyone in the team.
Speaking on The Cricket Monthly, Finch said, “IPL was probably the hardest, because you’re coming together for a short period of time. At Pune Warriors, I came in as a replacement player and then two or three games later, I was captain. I just didn’t have the time to get to know everybody in the squad, which is really difficult.”
On the other side, he mentioned how he enjoyed captaincy under Australia and for the Melbourne Renegades in Big Bash League (BBL).
He added, “Captaining Australia, you’ve got some of the best players in the world all the time, so my job was pretty easy there. Everyone knows what they’re trying to do.I wasn’t as good in the IPL as I was playing for the Renegades or for Australia. At times, the pressure of trying too much and trying to force it a little bit much was there.”
Finch made his IPL debut for the Rajasthan Royals back in the 2009 season. In a great turn of events, he got the chance to play alongside the legendary Shane Warne for one game. He then joined the Delhi Capitals for two seasons and later landed with the Pune Warriors in 2013. It was in the Kolkata Knight Riders where he ended his IPL stint in 2022. As part of nine IPL teams, the batter scored 2091 runs in 92 matches at a strike rate of 128.20.
Finch hoped to have been a part of one franchise and create a legacy to be looked back on like how Virat Kohli is doing under Royal Challengers Bengaluru.
“That’s a good way to look at it. Either I was a good enough player to keep getting picked, or I just wasn’t quite good enough to be that one or two-franchise type player. Of course, I’d have loved to stay at one franchise the whole time. But that’s one part of having a mega-auction every three years. Players probably missed that opportunity to really build a legacy at a club,” he concluded.
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