![Itchy feet: Aaron Finch is keen to be back at the crease. Photo: Justin McManus Itchy feet: Aaron Finch is keen to be back at the crease. Photo: Justin McManus](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/f9c853dd-c335-4e88-9a69-342a2956d132.jpg/r0_0_729_410_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
There have been upsides to Aaron Finch's hamstring tendon tearing in two, such as spending more than a week at home for the first time in three years. He and Amy have had the house painted. He's fussed over Evie, their cavoodle rescue dog with a liking for scrambled eggs. And he's had time to reflect.
A cricket bat sits in the corner of the bedroom, next to photos of Finch and Phillip Hughes. Some days they make him smile or laugh, just as he sometimes finds himself picking up his phone to pass on the latest, stupid, "You wouldn't believe what I just did" story. Other days they flatten his mood, a reminder that there'll be no more of those conversations.
He reckons it was the most difficult summer a cricketer could experience, beginning with that unimaginable low. That it brought Australia's best closer still, and effectively united all who play and follow the game at every level, makes him proud. As he knows it would his mate.
Finch never had a moment's doubt that Australia would win the World Cup – not when they lost to New Zealand, nor meeting India in a home semi-final on a Sydney pitch that could have been transplanted from Mumbai. "To come out of that summer with Australia dominating cricket, with great memories and terrible memories, it all adds up to a difficult time but a pretty special time as a cricketer."
They met at the academy. Finch was 20, had designs on the big bedroom with ensuite, but found it already occupied by a grinning 18-year-old. "Too slow, bro," Hughes told him. "You've gotta be here early to get the big room!"
Finch reckons they weren't as similar as shared country roots might suggest. "He was into his cattle – and fashion – and I wasn't. But we just got on unbelievably well."
In hotels around the world they'd gatecrash each other's calls home. Finch became close to Greg and Virginia Hughes without even realising. He'd be Skypeing Amy when Phil would stick his head into shot, grinning that grin, and say, "Hey Amy, show us your toes!"
"He reckoned if women had their toenails done, it meant they looked after themselves."
The day it happened he was playing a rare Shield game for Victoria. He noticed something different in coach Greg Shipperd's body language on the way into the rooms at tea. "We were thinking, 'Come on, Shaun Marsh isn't batting that well ...' "
"Hughesy's been hit," he told them. "Ambulance at the ground ..."
What happened next remains surreal – the hollowness of that last session at an empty MCG, when he had to excuse himself and go searching for more information. The phone conversations – David Warner saying things were improving, stay positive; Michael Clarke saying no, it's not looking good.
He flew to Sydney, stood at a hospital bedside. "Talking to a guy you know so well, not knowing if he can hear you, if he's gunna survive ..." He's grateful to Hughes' family for giving his other family the chance to say goodbye.
With Clarke and Tom Cooper, he represented Hughes' cricket life by carrying his coffin out of the Macksville High School hall, a hand on Greg Hughes' shoulder, eyes awash with tears. Hughes' Mum had rung and asked if he would. Finch smiles at the memory of her insisting, "Now, you'll be wearing a suit, won't you?" The honour moves him. "To know that we were as close as I thought we were, that his family knew that."
He was sharing the house with Glenn Maxwell then. Their emotions were rarely in synch – Finch wanted to talk when Maxwell didn't, and vice-versa. He learned a lot about grief. "There's no right or wrong way to grieve, and it took me a while to understand that.
"Even with something so unexpected, it's OK to celebrate someone's life, you don't have to be kicking cans all the time. You don't have to be crying to feel it."
Within the Australian set-up, and beyond through outpourings such as the impromptu "Put Out Your Bats" tribute, the strength of the game and those who love it stunned him. Nearly six months on, taxi drivers tell him they're sorry about what happened to his friend.
"The amount of people that it touched, just a kid playing a game he loved ..."
The number 408 will forever carry a divine cricketing air, but Finch thinks it would be trite to want his own Australian Test cricketer mark all the more because of Hughes' passing. It's always been his ambition, and with Lehmann at the helm he's more confident than ever he can realise it.
He points out with a knowing smirk that he averaged 53 in Shield cricket last summer (he only batted once), and admits that limited opportunities in the game's longer form has been a frustration; Finch has played just seven Shield games in the past two summers, only twice passing 50.
"But cricket's changed now. If Steve Smith wasn't in the Test team and he was peeling off one-day runs, he'd be in.
"I don't see it as any different for me – if I can get big runs in one-day cricket, there's no reason why they wouldn't be able to justify picking me."
A month into rehab from surgery to mend a hamstring torn just three games into the Indian Premier League season, his feet are itchy. Finch admits he prefers playing cricket to running laps and batting indoors, and the hill walking, jogging and bike riding that are being monitored by team physio Alex Kountouris (who lives nearby) are becoming tedious. He confesses to a history of one good month, two bad months in weight and skinfold measurements, but for the past year his fitness has been like his build – solid.
Lehmann's approach has helped. Finch admits he came back from Yorkshire last year nervous about testing, despite having done the work. His skinfolds came in under the target, likewise his two-kilometre time trial. The coach asked how he felt. "Relieved."
To which Lehmann replied: "Great. If you don't make any runs you're still gunna be dropped, it doesn't matter how fast you run."
They make a good pair. Finch reckons "Boof" has brought a rare refreshment to the group, an attitude that mistakes are OK so long as they're made trying to benefit team rather than individual. That batsmen occasionally nick or miss is accepted on the premise that bowlers are allowed to bowl good balls. "Get better at dealing with the best they can deliver, and if your best is better than theirs, you'll be successful."
He once told Lehmann he was working on some technique issues, and ventured that he must have done the same at some stage. "Mate, I averaged 58 in first-class cricket," came the reply. "I didn't have any problems." The humour betrays kindred spirits who see the game well and share an aggressive approach to it.
Finch acknowledges technical blips that he mastered in a World Cup opening hundred against England, and worked his way through in a grinding but important 81 in the semi-final win over India. A duck in the final completed an eccentric tournament, but wasn't laboured on. "I'd rather get a duck in a winning World Cup final than get a hundred and lose."
On reflection, the biggest mistake of the campaign came in a Prahran hotel rooftop garden the following afternoon, when he joined the band for Tracy Chapman's Fast Car. "I back myself to sing that one pretty well, but I did a shocking rendition. I'd had a few."
When he's not walking the neighbourhood hills or being what Amy calls "a cricket nuffy", checking how John Hastings, Peter Siddle, Peter Handscomb and others are faring on far-flung cricket fields, Finch finds himself wandering around the house with bat in hand, playing shots, imagining he's in form. "And I'm just batting in the lounge room by myself."
Lehmann's advice, offered with typical straightforwardness over a team dinner in New Zealand during the World Cup, stays with him. The words will be ringing in his ears when he heads back to Yorkshire in a fortnight, and in the five one-day internationals that follow the Ashes.
"Just make some runs you $#@! idiot."