Aaron Finch gives the Australian verdict on England & looks ahead to The Hundred

0:01Yeah, gone! Gone, he gets his fairytale ending! An epic way to go to a Test Match 100. The London Sphear, the first time win is the most remarkable thing you'll probably ever see in cricket. 604 and final Test wicket for Stewart Ball. It's India who win the T20 World Cup. Can you believe it? Moments after Stokes' international career is coming to an end. Another wicket for this incredible cricketer. OK, this week's Sky Cricket podcast, just as the 100 starts and England's white ball games against India have come to a conclusion. Nass is on holiday. Don't know where he is, actually, but I guess he's not at the F1, which is where you were, Finchie, last week in Belgium, enjoying yourself.

0:49You've been in Europe for a couple of days. How are you? Yeah, very well, thanks, Seth. Great to be here in the UK. But, yeah, a good three weeks with the family around Europe to escape the Melbourne winter is always nice, especially this time of year with a lot of Formula One, a lot of cricket on it. It's been brilliant. I mean, you're no stranger to English county cricket. You had a bit of Yorkshire time at Yorkshire time at Surrey for what, four or five seasons? Was that something you enjoyed? I loved it. I loved every bit of it. Obviously, playing for Yorkshire for a couple of years through a really successful on-field phase was outstanding and then a big change to move to the big lights of London with Surrey, which that was unbelievable as well.

1:32And the thing that always strikes me is that there are two polar different cultures around English cricket. You've got the North, which everyone lives tight. They're nice and close. You go for a beer with one guy and eight turn up because everyone's just really tight. Whereas if you're at Surrey, trying to catch up for dinner with two people is almost impossible because they're living all over the place. I was in the middle of town. But loved my time. I loved the culture of county cricket, whether it be championship cricket or T20s. It was some of the highlights of my career, to be honest. You're more of a country boy, I suppose, are you?

2:09You're talking about that kind of split between the North and London. But you're Ballarat, were you? Is that where you grew up? I was Colac, which is not far from Ballarat. So two hours west of Melbourne, which is very rural. farming, dairy farms and a working class culture. So I'm very much at home in that situation. But living in Melbourne for 18 years and then relocating halfway back to where I grew up to, it's still a big city in Geelong. That's just a part of who you are. I think enjoying space, enjoying some fresh air away from noisy traffic is always good as well. But then you get the opportunity to travel the world as a cricketer and now as a broadcaster.

2:51I mean, I spend a lot of my time in India, which is chaos. Then you come to London, which is its own type of chaos. And it's a great mix I've got at the moment, which is nice. And being able to have my family travel with me quite a bit, particularly they always find an excuse to come to the European summer, don't they? So it's great fun. It's a great balance. Are you missing the game at all? I mean, you've moved on, obviously, from playing. You're doing plenty of broadcasting. Do you miss it at all or not? I don't miss playing. uh that's the one thing I was really lucky and fortunate in I was able to call time on my career and as most people say in professional sport there's there's not many fairy tale endings so the the having the ability to say you know what I think my time is now and my time is done to me that gave great closure to my career it wasn't as though I thought you know what we've got an extra 12 months in us.

3:47We've got, and I've been sacked effectively. So I was really fortunate. And then I think I've got the second best job in the world now to be able to travel the world and watch the best players in the world and watch how much the game has transformed in the last four or five years, particularly in the shorter formats in T20 and ODI cricket to get the opportunity to do that around the world without the nerves and anxiety of turning up to mark centre and walk out and play and be fixated on a win or a loss is it's amazing I still get nerves turning up to cricket grounds as I did when I played but then as soon as you sit in the commentary box that all disappears and you don't get attached to the result which provides so much anxiety to the players and to fans who are deeply invested so I'm very comfortable with with how it ended when it ended and where it's all moved to now and you mentioned the nerves and anxiety there Were you a particularly nervous or anxious type or did you find ways of coping with that pretty well when you played?

4:48I think my career went in different phases and I don't know whether you felt the same. When you first start your career, you get really nervous and anxious because you don't know if you belong at that level yet. So it's almost that that's one type of nerves. And then you sort of move into the second phase of your career where you're embedded in the team. and then you can almost relax and you don't fixate on the result or your result as much. And then as you get right towards the end, you start to look at the end and then you start to think, you know what, I've seen a lot of players over their career, when it starts to slide slightly, media start talking like we do generally and they say, well, how much longer?

5:28Is it time? Is he good enough? Has his eyes gone? Which is a classic line for batters. and then I think you get a little bit of anxiety in that part as well but the for the second half of my career I'd say captaining Australia you you focus almost drifts away from your own performance at times and you're able to almost because you're thinking about everybody else and you and your training and your preparation and all the planning that goes on behind the scenes it doesn't give you a huge amount of time to be able to get nervous yourself and really focus on your own performance as much. Of course you do when you're doing your own preparation and you're walking out to bat, that's all on you.

6:07But your time is spread reasonably thin that you don't have time like a lot of players do to sit around and overanalyze the game in your head. You tend to do that a bit more as a bowling captain when you start to think, right, well, we're playing against England today. What if Joss Butler gets off to a flyer? Who do I turn to? How do we navigate that? How do we look for wickets but also contain uh they're the things that that were probably giving them making you the most nervous the most anxious but that's a different type and that's that was a part of the challenge that I enjoyed the most about playing in captaincy actually well you're here for the hundred how many games are you doing for us by the way I think I've got 11 11 okay well we'll get we'll get on to that in a bit but you mentioned the um captain in Australia I just noticed that Australia have announced their test match squad for Bangladesh.

6:59It's the start of an incredible run of test matches actually for Australia and all their big guns seem to be back. Is it your understanding that the likes of Comin, Stark, Hazelwood, Smith are going to try and get through to the end of the ashes in 27 and see that as a departure point? I mean, do you expect them to get through this incredibly testing period to the ashes? They'd all want to get through and play every single test match. Is it possible? Probably not. Is it unreasonable to expect, particularly three fast bowlers who have played across all three formats for a long period of time, they'll 100 % be managed through that period, no doubt about that.

7:42Steve Smith, on the other hand, he's no chance of putting his hand up for a rest. he's had a couple of injuries that have held him out of games for the last couple of years every now and then but ideally they would love to be a part of each and every test there's never been a test player that I've known so yeah you know what I want to rest especially in that Australian bowling group because I mean you've got Scott Boland there as the what everybody assumed for a long period of time was Australia's fourth quick now there's a big battle between him and Pat Cummins sorry him and Josh Hazelwood for that third quick spot so Hazelwood's certainly not going to say oh you give Scotty a go this game he deserves it and if Scotty's got the first one he's not going to give Josh Hazelwood a sniff so I think it'll be unreasonable to expect them to play each and every test match there will definitely be some rotation there from the quicks but yeah it's a huge 20 test matches that's a that's a huge workload over the next 14 months I think 15 months yeah it was it was essentially the same squad as beat england in the ashes isn't it jake weatherall at the top of the order were you surprised that they made no changes at all or brought anybody in or the fact that you know they'd won that ashes series so convincingly just uh that's the way it is in australia you keep winning and it's hard to dislodge the players who are the incumbents yeah it is hard to dislodge and um when you look back on that series there was some incredibly difficult batting conditions right throughout.

9:13When you look at the test match in Perth, that at times was difficult. Brisbane was difficult. Melbourne. So I'm not surprised one bit. One of Andrew McDonald's great strengths and his great philosophies is don't pull the trigger on players too early because with Jake Weatherald, he's played five of the most difficult test matches you were ever likely to play. So I think if you judge a player purely on that, then that's been incredibly harsh. So I'm not surprised. I think over the next 12 months, I think that you might see particularly that number six batter spot. Maybe there's an opportunity to start getting some fresh players into that role and almost cherry picking when you decide to do that.

10:01one thing coaches and captains and teams i think at times aren't very good at is they say you know what you're you're a young batter we've got it we've got a really settled number four five and six so we're going to throw a young batter in at number three the most difficult along with opening unless you're a specialist opener we'll throw the young kid up at number three because we want to protect what's already been pretty good for us and i i don't agree with that i think when i was growing up playing, the youngster come in and batted at number six because that was almost a soft seat into the game.

10:36Ricky Ponting did it playing for Australia. He batted at six for maybe 20 tests, would you say? 25 tests? And then moved up. And then right, he's ready. He's ready to take over. Bang, he goes to three. Too often now we throw young kids into the most difficult positions to protect what we've already got and has been working. And that's one part that I don't agree with. So I would like to see a little bit of traditional thinking in the sense of, right, youngster, you have a crack at number six, get your feet in international cricket, find out how to go about the game, how to prepare mentally what it feels like, understand that you might play a three test series, but you will be as drained as you've ever been in your life mentally.

11:14And then you start to build up that base of a player so that when they do get the opportunity to move up, they're ready. But yeah, I can see that happening in the next 12 months. But for now, with players fresh and rested, they're not going to be giving anybody an opportunity to take their spot. So pretty settled for you guys, which is a long way from where England are right now in Test Creek. What's been the view over in Australia? Are you all just kind of laughing at the mess we got ourselves into here with Stokes and McCollum and everything that happened in the New Zealand series? A little bit, honestly, yeah.

11:47And, I mean, you never want to see players feel like they're being forced out or coaches be sacked. No one wants to see that. But the way that it's all panned out, it has been a little bit like a circus. When you look back to the preparation of the Ashes, I thought not having a warm-up game for whatever reason, and everyone's got their opinion on why they weren't able to have one at the WACA, which is the closest replication you can have to Perth Stadium, and almost shutting everybody out saying, no, we know best, we know what we're doing, we're here to win. And then for it to fall apart like that, to see where it goes, in the New Zealand series where New Zealand played traditional hard test cricket and found a way to grind out a win.

12:30They weren't interested. Daryl Mitchell wasn't interested in saying, you know what, I've copped a few blows. This is getting a bit too hard. I'll hit one up the chimney because, geez, this has got too big for me. He ground out a brilliant test match innings, put his team in a winning position. They go on and win a series, which is hard to do away from home. Every team says that winning away from home is their biggest challenge. And I think that when you look at it as a whole, you say, Jesus, there's been a few decisions that, whether it be style of play, shot selection, decisions behind the scenes, as an Australian, you sit back and giggle a little bit because at different times, we've been in that position as well.

13:11So you can understand. Have you ever had a curfew banged on you as an Australian? Never. No. And if there was, it would have been playing laid out in black and white. Well, yes. It does seem a kind of the last resort of a management team that slightly lost control of the situation, doesn't it? It does. And it's hard to know exactly what is going on without being inside those four walls. So you can speculate all you want, but from the outside, it has looked like a bit of a mess. So they're in this tricky situation now where they're trying to obviously find a test coach. It looks as though they might go down the split coach's route, but they may be forced to appoint Harry Brook as a captain across formats.

13:57How do you... Australia probably play a bit less test cricket than England do. England's test schedule is very demanding, a little bit more demanding than Australia's, apart from this coming period for you guys. But how have you viewed... But generally, you've had one coach across formats, It's Andrew McDonnell does it all. That's the way it's been. Do you like split coaches? Would you like split coaches? Do you think it could work or do you just think there needs to be one guy in charge across the board? I don't think there needs to be one guy across the board. I think if you're going to do it, it has to be white ball and red ball.

14:32I think it would be incredibly difficult to say, test one day and then you're the T20 coach. So from that point of view, I think it's important that there's consistency consistency across formats of the game in that regard so I don't see an issue because being a part of the Australian squad we had a real core of players maybe five up to six or seven at different times that went across the formats anyway and and there was always a really consistent message across the board and with that comes one coach and it's one philosophy on on the way that you want to play it is one um one expectation and plans and everything so so in that regard we've had it really lucky different captains want to want their team to function slightly different and that that was certainly the case when i was captain of of the two white ball formats and it was tim payne for a while and it was pat cummins but the messaging was always how did that dynamic work i mean particularly over you know over the scheduling of players You know, you've got a gun player that everybody wants, but then he's got to have a rest at some point, which is becoming increasingly more the case as the schedules get ever more kind of crammed.

15:46How did that conversation go between you and the test captain? Or did you leave that to the coach and the people above you, the selectors above you? I was always one to say I wasn't a selector. So I would submit my teams, submit my squads and say, you know what, this is what I want. This is why I want this. and then they say, well, you know what, you can't have Steve Smith this series because he's had such a big workload. And you say, well, that's a bit hard on me because I want the best players available. But also they say, yeah, but do you want him playing in two years' time or do you not? Say, yeah, of course I do.

16:20Okay, well, so there has to be a bit of push and pull in that regard and you totally understand it. And that's the luxury of having one coach across the board, whether it was Darren Lehman for a long period of time and then JL and then Andrew McDonald. So there was always that consistency of communication at different times when you say, but I want Stark Cummins and Hazelwood to play in my ODI team. Yeah, but we've got a test series coming. So you understand it and when you sit down and you're having those conversations informally, I think is the best one, whether it's over the phone or whether it's face-to-face and you go through a heap of different scenarios and you say, well, can I have one of them?

17:01Well, no, not really, because the ashes is coming out and you understand it. So I think it's been realistic. And when you're doing that and you never turn up to a series expecting to lose or expecting to get blown away at different times. So you say, okay, what does this tour look like for us? And that's not a conversation that you have with the players. That's a conversation that you're having with the with the coach or with the management and say, okay, is a realistic expectation for us going to South Africa with probably a really undercooked young team with no experience in our bowlers and our best batter missing?

17:37Can we win it? Yeah, of course we can. But an expectation is that we compete, we fight. If we can win a game, if we can get to the last game, one all or two all, then that's probably a successful tour. So it's understanding that you're not going to win every series if if you're having those conversations consistently then I think it's it's the expectation is laid out in at the start and generally the way that we went about it was you work back from the World Cup so 2019 World Cup there's there was a bit of turmoil in 2018 don't know whether you heard about it in Australian cricket so but we worked back and said right what what point do we need each player at for the role that we see them playing in that World Cup and And you work backwards from there and you pick probably, and again, this is something that you don't talk to the individual player about, but it's just markers that we want to see behind the scenes on where each and every player we think that they should be at and where they are at at different points in time to see whether they're tracking to play the role that we need them to in that World Cup.

18:53Hi there, I'm Pete Graves, and while you're enjoying this show, I just wanted to let you know that we are back with another round of Transfer Talk, where we'll be talking about who's on the move, where they're going, what they could bring to your team. So if you don't already, please like and subscribe. You can watch 3Sky TV on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. See you soon.

19:20you mentioned uh justin langer who you worked under he's been in the conversation a little bit um around the england job and tom moody another australian have you worked with tom moody as well or not yeah i have okay yeah i've worked with tom um i played under an overview of both their qualities uh tom very intelligent he's somebody who sees the big picture having been involved in cricket for such a long period of time both western australia and australia and then coaching all around the world and now and now sitting above a lot of teams as as a gm or um yeah almost a gm i guess yeah across some different formats of the game he's somebody who sees the game incredibly well.

20:06His ability to identify talent and stick to a plan is outstanding. JL worked under him for a long time, worked closely with him for a long time as well. He was a hard taskmaster at times, but also at different times really structured in how he went about things. So I think both would fit the bill for what England seem to be crying out for at the moment, which is... It would be quite a departure from Brendan McCollum, wouldn't it? I mean, often when you change coaches, the pendulum swings completely the other way. Yeah, it does. And there was times when, as players, we were critical of JL for being probably that too far.

20:48We went from Darren Lehman, who was in the Brendan McCollum part, which is very, just go and play, if in doubt, be positive, be aggressive, to JL, which was a bit more structured, a bit more rigid in the way that he went about things. But also it wasn't, sorry, I think that his evolution over his time as Australian coach and now having seen the franchise circuit with coaching in different T20 and 100 competitions, I think that would have helped his coaching development as well across the time. But both would be brilliant. You think coaching in the franchise world, which we'll get onto now, gives you a different perspective?

21:32Because obviously player power is at its height in the franchise world, isn't it? Players can choose where they play, who they play for, and therefore the coaches have to kind of temper what they might have seen in international cricket and national teams. yeah 100 % uh and probably the power of the players depends on where you're coaching as well there's there's some competitions that you think Cricket Australia competitions ECB competitions which have got heavy presence of the playing of the players organization PCA here and the ACA in Australia so there's there's not a huge amount that um players can do even that they'll still get the 100 % support of the Players Association, but there's not a huge amount they can do.

22:25India's a different kettle of fish altogether. That's very much the superstar players demanding this. You've got two options. You either have them or you don't. So it's about working with players and it's about understanding how to get the best out of each play in a short space of time. It's not a state or a county situation where you're working with a player for 10 months of the year and you can track changes along the way. You can implement changes along the way, whether it's technique, whether it's tactical, physical, mental. This is very much franchise cricket is come in, find a way to get the best out of this player right now.

23:04And you've got four days before the tournament to start to drill your messaging in. So it's totally different. I think you have to probably be a lot more flexible. And that's coming from somebody who hasn't coached. I'd love to one day, but you have to be more flexible. you have to be able to pivot a lot quicker and say, you know what, that's not working right now. How do we change? How do we get to a different point in one game? Because there's no time to change someone's technique. There's probably no real time to change someone's hardwired way that they want to play the game. So it might be a different role for them, a different strategy.

23:42And that's what the best players do. You see the guys that have been consistent over a long period of time. I think Joss Butler, Heinrich Klaas and these type of players, they play all around the world, but they're still successful all the time in different conditions against different oppositions with different kind of pressures on them. So I think that both players and coaches have to be so adaptable in the franchise world. We just started the 100 and it's the first year of private investment here, which has been quite a journey to get to that point. and there's a lot of tension still around it.

24:16But that is also the case in Australia right now, isn't it, where they're arguing about the whys and wherefores of private investment into the BBL. How do you see it? Would you favour it? Do you think it will happen? I think it will be inevitable that it happens. Do I favour it? Yeah, I do because the funding… Before you explain that, Australia has the gold standard domestic system. It's produced more good players than anybody else probably. Why would you want to disrupt that with private investment? Well, I think with private investment, that brings a different funding into the game. I think for the sustainability of Australian cricket long-term, you need funding at grassroots.

25:01And while the coffers are a little bit empty at the moment, I think that there has to be a way that right from community kids cricket right through to the Australian men's and women's test teams, that they need funding right the way through so i think that this is a way to do it um one thing that one disadvantage that we have in australia is with we compete with our with ourself you have a test match marquee series going on at the same time as the big bash so if if i'm an investor and i think that this is where there could be a lot of pushback and there It could be a force into changing something.

25:40Because if I'm pulling in a couple hundred million to buy a big, big, bad franchise, and Melbourne Renegades, which I played for for so long, if I say, right, well, we want, I'll buy the franchise, but I want all my players playing. So yeah, you know what? You're paying all this money, but we're going to take the best 14 players out of the competition. No, but I'm paying my money. I want my players available. So I think that that will force Cricket Australia into a decision on scheduling that says, you know what, we need to find a way to create clear air for both competitions, the Test Summer and the Big Bash, because I don't think for so long you can't go on not having your best players available.

26:29And that's one thing that the 100 has done really well. The superstars are always there. Um, so I think, I think it's a good thing in that regard. Um, am I right in saying that the opening match of the BBL is, is, um, that they're touting it to be played in Chennai next year? That's right. It's bonkers. Melbourne Renegades versus, uh. They're bonkers. Oh, I can understand it when, when you're looking at the viewing audience around the world and the commercial impact that India has on the rest of cricket. I, I understand it. I know that for a fact that a lot of teams said, well, yeah, we don't mind you doing it but we're not going to do it because we're not selling one of our home games which brings in so much revenue for the team so I don't mind it I'll be honest I think it's unusual that's for sure but when you're in a world of looking to sell off your franchises where do most of the franchises in the world come from they're mainly India so I understand it would I like to play that I always love playing in India, but say, right, I'm getting my head around playing at the MCG.

27:38Okay, now you're going to be playing in Chennai, which is totally different conditions. So the short answer is I understand it, but it still is a bit unusual. Well, there is a three-week window here for the 100 at the moment. In fact, cricket's been fighting for its corner a little bit this summer because the football World Cup's been on and various things. And there's a three-week window now, which, as you say, is good for the 100 and that competition. But it means that what happens is that international cricket gets pushed to the margins. So we'll have test matches in September. We'll have white ball cricket in September.

28:17So what they're doing is kind of manipulating the market, really, because of the reasons that you suggested. The franchise owners have paid over$500 million for the three-week window of the$100. They're creating the conditions by which they have the best players. But it does mean that there are challenges elsewhere in the schedule. You'll end up with test matches and the ODIs are going to be played late in September when it's miserable weather here or likely miserable weather. yeah and i mean and what you'll get on the back of that is the odd player being wrested from international cricket so uh and that's where fans get a little bit confused at times i think because they say well no i'm turning up to watch England play but where's Joffre well he had he played a few test matches then he's played the hundred um so he's not going to play this series for England and they said but isn't test cricket isn't international cricket the pinnacle of your sport yes it is depending on who you're asking so so that that's where like if young kids coming through now they say i want to play cricket for my london or i want to play cricket for um the chennai super kings or the melbourne stars it just takes a little bit of recalibration of of the brain i think and and for for myself and for yourself i'm sure and and people who've watched cricket for decades they say they can't get their head around that but it's a reality of the way that times are changing and yeah i mean you're pretty close to having played you're not that far out of the game do you you see that clearly obviously but do you are you pretty hopeful for the future of test cricket and and the long format of the game or do you think it's it's doomed and there'll just be an inevitable um you know growth continued growth of franchise cricket and it will just swamp everything.

30:12I really hope there's not. And the current way that it's going at the moment, franchise cricket is becoming more and more powerful. But I think the players' passion for Test cricket, I think, is still so strong. You see Joe Root pumping out Test 100 still way into his 30s, becoming one of the greatest players of all time. You hear Steve Smith and the Australians talk about the impact of test cricket, Shudman Gill, the Indian captain, saying this is the pinnacle. This is what everybody wants to play. This is why we love cricket. We fell in love with cricket because we love test cricket. So I'm really hopeful for international cricket.

30:53Is there still probably the window more than anything, the time for three formats? Maybe that's where the choke point is in this whole discussion. Other teams around the world saying, well we can't afford to play test cricket so that's an issue so there's so many complex issues that I'm I'm well and truly nowhere near qualified to talk about but for my personal view I love test cricket I love international cricket but also appreciate franchise cricket it's it's it has its place well and truly and it's becoming so powerful it's only going to be the dollars and cents and the passion of the players that that dictates where it goes and you're here for 11 games and at 100 what are you what are you looking forward to are you going all around have you got games mainly in London or you are you up north as well I'm everywhere um the first game at Lourdes on Thursday uh then I'm up in Leeds Manchester back to London Cardiff Southampton so I'm all I'm all over the place uh which is brilliant I love this country it's it's it's so great to get around and be in different parts.