Aaron Finch undergoes knee surgery, recovery in 10 weeks

Australian limited-overs skipper Aaron Finch, on Thursday,  underwent surgery to fix his knee. Finch was dealing with a knee problem for a while and aggravated the same during the T20I series against West Indies, leaving him with no option but to go under the knife to mend his knee. Consequently, Finch had to miss the ODI leg of the West Indies tour and the subsequent five-match T20I series against Bangladesh. Meanwhile, Finch is expected to take around 10 weeks to recover.

“His recovery is expected to take 8-10 weeks meaning he should be available for the opening games of the World Cup in mid-October,” CA said in a statement.

The 10 weeks of Finch’s recovery will complete in the third week of October, days before the Super 12s of the T20 World Cup starts. If everything goes as expected, Finch will be available to lead Australia in the showpiece event. Australia are placed in the same group as West Indies, England, and South Africa wherein two other teams will qualify later.

The absence of senior players from the West Indies and Bangladesh tours has hurt Australia. The Kangaroos were blown away 4-1 by West Indies in the T20Is before Bangladesh mauled them by the same margin in their first-ever bilateral T20I series. This was Australia’s fifth consecutive T20I series defeat, having previously lost to England, India, New Zealand, and West Indies.

Australia have never won a T20 World Cup, with their best performance coming in 2010 where they reached the final.