Aaron Finch slammed his third T20I ton in the last 10 innings to take Surrey to a superb win against Middlesex. He scored 117 off 52 balls, a knock which was designed by 11 fours and 8 sixes as Surrey chased down the target of 222 in just 16 overs.
Surrey's other Aussie recruit Nic Maddinson (13 off nine) helped put the finishing touches on the nine-wicket victory over their London rivals. Middlesex's Australian import Ashton Agar was largely powerless to stop the onslaught, though his figures of 0-43 from four overs were his side's most economical.
"We got off to a flying start but we looked up and we still needed 10 runs per over after four or five overs, so we knew we needed to keep pushing the game as quickly as we could to give us some options at the back end," Finch told the BBC. The knock sees Finch rise to the top of 2018's leading T20 run-scorers, having scored 1,156 runs at 60.84 so far this year, a remarkable achievement given his sorry Indian Premier League campaign for Kings XI Punjab in which he managed just 134 runs in 10 games.
Since arriving at The Oval last month after captaining Australia on their T20 tri-series in Zimbabwe, Finch has managed scores of 58, 131 not out, 83, 43 not out, 30 and 117 not out. That comes after he smashed the highest score in international T20 history against Zimbabwe last month in Harare with a 76-ball 172.
"That was unbelievable," Surrey captain Jade Dernbach told Sky Sports after his side's win on Friday. "We have just witnessed two of the best T20 players in the world putting on a show in front of a full house and I'm not sure if I've seen anything like it. "The clean hitting of Aaron and Jason was incredible to watch and what they both did out there is just pure talent."
Here is a little clip of Finch's dominating innings.
9️⃣8️⃣ RUNS IN THE POWERPLAY ????@AaronFinch5 & @JasonRoy20 can't stop hitting sixes...
— Vitality Blast (@VitalityBlast) August 3, 2018
More clips >>> https://t.co/Hw8mxPvgkR pic.twitter.com/OTrZczliS7