Was constantly thinking of not running Sachin Tendulkar out at Lord’s, recalls Aaron Finch
Aaron Finch has recalled his memory of batting alongside Sachin Tendulkar for MCC in 2014, where he was worried that he would run the Indian batsman out in front of a jam-packed crowd at Lord’s. He also reckoned that it was an unbelievable experience batting with the cricketing legends.
As part of the Lord’s Bicentenary celebration match in 2014, Sachin Tendulkar’s MCC team took on the challenge of facing the Rest of the World side led by Shane Warne. It was the Australian spinner’s team, who batted first on the day, scoring 293 runs during their stipulated overs. During the run chase, the onus was on the MCC openers, Aaron Finch and Sachin Tendulkar to chase down the target set by the Australian-led side.
The duo added on 107 runs for the first wicket before Tendulkar slapped on straight to his own stumps facing Muttiah Muralitharan. However, Finch recalled the particular encounter, admitting that he was constantly thinking of not running Sachin Tendulkar out.
“All I was thinking was don’t run him out. Just do not run Sachin out. I think it was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, crowds that Lord’s has ever had. It was a huge anniversary, Sachin’s captaining one team, Warnie’s captaining the other,” Finch said on the Sony Ten Pitstop Show.
Following Sachin’s dismissal, the Australian opener was joined at the crease by Brian Lara, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Rahul Dravid. Alongside the cricketing legends, the Victorian had scored 181 runs, taking them to a majestic seven-wicket victory, with 25 balls left.
“Luckily, that was an unbelievable experience, batting with Sachin, Dravid, Brian Lara, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, it was unbelievable. Also on the other side was Gilly (Adam Gilchrist) and Sehwag opening the batting, which is an absolute dream for me to watch them bat together. KP [Kevin Pietersen], Yuvi [Yuvraj Singh] got a big hundred as well. It was unbelievable, such a great day, something that I would never forget,” he added.
He also added that with a huge presence of Indian crowd at the ground, the atmosphere was lively, with chants of ‘Sachin-Sachin’ all around the cricketing Mecca. However, that also, according to Finch, added more pressure on himself for not running out the Indian batsman.
“That was a huge day. I think there was a huge Indian presence at the ground too, they were very loud. Obviously, the chants of ‘Sachin-Sachin’ going up all around Lord’s. And I just kept thinking, ‘If I run him out, I would never hear the end of this. I might not get out of Lord’s’”.