‘IPL was probably the…’: Former Australian captain Aaron Finch shared his Indian Premier League Journey

Former Australian captain, Aaron Finch is considered as one of the greatest T20 players. He led Australia to the T20 World Cup win in 2021 and also guided Melbourne Renegades to the Big Bash League title in 2018–19. Finch played 103 T20Is for Australia, scoring 3,120 runs, and is Australia’s second-highest run-scorer in T20 cricket with 11,458 runs overall. In the BBL, he is the second-highest run-scorer with 3,311 runs. During his career, he also played for nine different IPL teams and even captained Pune Warriors. Finch has now said that captaining in the IPL is the toughest compared to leading Australia or a BBL side.

“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. 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 told The Cricket Monthly.

Aaron Finch started his IPL career in 2010 with Rajasthan Royals as a replacement player. In 2011, he moved to Delhi Capitals and stayed there for two seasons. In 2013, he joined Pune Warriors India, where he also became captain and scored his best IPL season tally of 456 runs. The following year (2014), Finch played for Sunrisers Hyderabad, then joined Mumbai Indians in 2015. After that, he spent two years (2016–17) with Gujarat Lions.

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In 2018, Punjab bought him for ₹6.2 crore, and in 2020, Royal Challengers Bengaluru picked him up for ₹4.4 crore. Later, he played for Kolkata Knight Riders as a replacement for Alex Hales, which turned out to be his final IPL season.

“I made my IPL debut for Rajasthan Royals. I played one match under Warnie (Shane Warne) as a replacement player, the last game of the year. It’s funny how your career can take different turns. At the end of that year, I’d signed a three-year deal with Rajasthan. I was an uncapped player, and that was all above board at the time. We went to the Champions League, and I had already got my three-year deal with Rajasthan locked away. Everyone else was playing for an IPL deal, really, but it didn’t bother me how I went, and I performed well. And then, just before the auction, they decided that everybody was in the auction. Now teams couldn’t sign uncapped players (on longer contracts),” Finch stated.

“So then I ended up at Delhi (Daredevils) for a couple of years and didn’t play a huge amount. There were guys like David Warner, KP (Kevin Pietersen), Ross Taylor, Mahela Jayawardene in front of me. After two years, when the team hasn’t had success, you’re the first one to go, because those [other] guys are superstars and legends. A few things like that just happened along the way. I played a year at Sunrisers (Hyderabad), where myself, (David) Warner and Shikhar Dhawan were all in the same side. Three openers, mixing and matching between opening and batting three. It gets to the end of the year and they said, “Well, someone’s got to make way.” And it happened to be me,” Finch added.

“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. There’s not a huge amount of players that have done it right throughout. Even Rohit (Sharma) started at Deccan (Chargers), before moving to Mumbai Indians). Yeah, Shane Watson was a legend for Rajasthan (Royals) and then he goes and wins the title with Chennai (Super Kings). It’s just strange how it all works,”