The change Australia have to make as Finch searches for a spark

If Aaron Finch was a gambler, Friday night may call for his most daring hand.

There’s no doubt the Australian captain is struggling. You don’t need to be Einstein to work that out. He knows himself. But when it comes to making a change, the die is cast. If the defending champions were going to make a change, they had to do it before a ball was bowled. Now Finch needs to find a spark, and he needs to find it fast.

We can prepare to see Finch at the top of the order for Australia in their Twenty20 World Cup clash against England at the MCG on Friday night. Finch will play, and Australia will adopt the same attitude: throw caution to the wind and hope one or two players can pull off something spectacular. If Finch plays a daring hand, it might be his night.

Cricket can be like that. I went through the same thing myself many years ago as a player, where you just can’t get your feet going. The harder you try, the worse it gets. The extra problem Finch has got is he is playing in a very short form of the game.

I can go back 25 years ago to when I had a real struggle with the bat, but at least in Test match cricket, there were two ways you could go about it: you could either hit your way out of trouble, or spend time at the crease and hope eventually your form would return. Luckily for me, it did. Finch doesn’t have that luxury – so he needs to take the first option. He’s got a Twenty20 match where he is going to face a maximum of about 60 balls. He faced 43 balls and only made 31 runs on Tuesday night. He knows that sort of strike rate won’t win Australia the World Cup.

The tournament hosts were lucky they had Marcus Stoinis at the crease against Sri Lanka, peeling off the fastest men’s T20 international half-century in Australia’s history.

They’re flirting with danger by saying, ‘We will always get someone playing a Stoinis-like innings if we keep picking Glenn Maxwell, Stoinis, Tim David and Mitchell Marsh, with Matthew Wade at seven’. They’re backing one or two of those guys to tee off and get away with it. It’s a very aggressive approach. It worked in Dubai last year when we won the World Cup, but these pitches are doing a bit. They’re carrying, there’s seam movement.

Teeing off against quality fast bowling is not easy, so I question whether Australia have adopted the right strategy. I’d suggest not, which is why I would have Steve Smith in my team.