David Warner reveals how his text message might have helped Aaron Finch return to form

Australia's white-ball captain Aaron Finch and David Warner stitched a brilliant 134-run opening partnership to win the first T20I against Sri Lanka on Tuesday. Both scored a half-century to help the team win the match by 10 wickets. Warner has now revealed how his text message might have helped Finch regain his lost form.

Over the last few months, there have been dark clouds hovering over Finch's performances. Prior to the match against Sri Lanka, he was unable to accumulate significant runs. During Australia's white-ball tour of Pakistan in March and April of this year, the white-ball skipper only got one half-century, which come during the one-off T20I. Before that game, he had poor scores of 23, 0 and 0 in three ODIs.

His poor record continued into the Indian T20 League 2022 as well. In five appearances for Kolkata, he scored 86 runs at an average of 17.2. After the match against Sri Lanka, Warner said that text messages sent to Finch during the Indian T20 League may have helped spark his return to form.

"I just kept in touch with him (during the Indian T20 League), we always do. We always support each other as much as we can. If we see little things, we always try help each other out by dropping him a message," he said, as quoted by news18.

Warner pointed up Finch's faults, saying that he moved too close to the line of delivery, limiting his access to the ball. "I just said to him not to walk out into the ball, let the ball actually do its work in the air. And if they want to bowl nice and full and you stay still and keep that leg stump line, you’re going to get full contact with the ball, and if it swings late, it’s going to go down leg," he said.

"For Finchy, it’s about keeping it simple and not moving too much around the crease. We saw that tonight (against Sri Lanka), he played some nice shots, he timed the ball well and when he’s nice and still, that’s when he’s at his best. He looked to hit everything down the ground (in the first T20), when the ball was in his area, he hit his slog sweeps which he is very good at… and you could just see the energy was a lot different with him running between wickets and he was up and about, and it was great to see," he added.