Missing the ongoing ICC T20 World Cup 2022 Match 38 against Afghanistan in Adelaide, Australia captain Aaron Finch might have played his last international match especially if Australia don’t qualify through to the semi-finals.
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Wicket-keeper batter Matthew Wade, who has led Australia in six T20Is in the past, is leading in place of Finch tonight. While Australia hadn’t named a vice-captain in their squad for this World Cup, Test and ODI captain Pat Cummins was their last designated T20I vice-captain (during the tour of India in September).
With Wade losing the toss for the fifth time as an Australian captain, Afghanistan captain Mohammad Nabi put the hosts in to bat first. Although spinner Rashid Khan is fit enough to play his first T20I at his Big Bash League home ground, Afghanistan have made a couple of changes to their Playing XI by including Darwish Rasooli and Naveen-ul-Haq for Azmatullah Omarzai and Fareed Ahmad.
“We’ll try our best [to upset Australia’s party]. Wasn’t a good tournament for us. After the first game, we had two games washed out. We didn’t play for 10 days and it wasn’t a good performance against Sri Lanka. Hopefully, we finish on a good note,” Nabi told the broadcaster at the toss.
Why is Aaron Finch not playing today vs Afghanistan?
For the unversed, Finch is missing this match for not recovering from a hamstring injury. Finch, who had given himself and batter Tim David a 70% chance of playing their last Super 12 match, hasn’t been able to make the cut just like David. Furthermore, Australia are also without speedster Mitchell Starc at the Adelaide Oval on Friday.
“It’d have been nice if we didn’t put ourselves in this position [needing to register a massive victory to qualify]. We’ve been here before. We got to secure a win first but if an opportunity comes where we can push the pace a bit we’ll try to do that. Otherwise, we just got to try and win,” Wade told the broadcaster at the toss.
Having made three changes to their Playing XI, Australia have handed opportunities to all-rounder Cameron Green, batter Steven Smith and pacer Kane Richardson.
