AARON FINCH

Australia’s limited-overs captain Aaron Finch turned out for his eighth franchise in the IPL, when Royal Challengers Bangalore bought him for INR 1 cr. Finch is the only batsman in T20I cricket to have two scores of 150 plus to his name, including the highest T20I and second-highest T20 individual score of 172.

He comes in with a big reputation and has won the Big Bash League leading the Melbourne Renegades team in Australia. However, for some reason, he has not managed to set the IPL on fire, despite having a technique that is tailor-made for such cricket. RCB must have put a lot of thought into bringing him in as an opener.

IPL 2020: WATCH- Aaron Finch caught vaping in RCB dressing room during match vs RR

Before him, Virat Kohli opened the innings with Parthiv Patel for most of the IPL 2019, but this season, AB de Villiers took over the keeping duties in order to free up space for Finch at the top. Unfortunately, despite backing him to the hilt, Finch just couldn’t come good in the way RCB had hoped.

In 12 matches, he passed 50 only once and made 268 runs at an average of 22.33 and strike-rate of 111.20, far cry from his T20 strike-rate of 142.46 and average of 35.52. Only 8 sixes and 28 fours came from his bat, meaning that he couldn’t take advantage of the powerplays as RCB would have liked and it contributed to extra pressure on De Villiers and Kohli later in the batting department.