Aaron Finch is determined to focus on his cricket, despite losing Australia's Twenty20 captaincy. Test and ODI skipper Steve Smith took the short-form captaincy from Finch last month as Australia named their World Twenty20 squad, but they lost the former's first game since taking charge on Friday, slipping to a three-wicket defeat against South Africa in Durban.
Finch remains at the top of the order for now, and top-scored with 40 from just 18 deliveries.
And, after seeing David Miller's first T20I fifty win the game for the Proteas at Kingsmead, Finch was quick to deflect attention away from any fears for his spot now he is not leading the team.
"If you start thinking about that [selection] you go away from your natural game and you go away from what's made me successful in the past," Finch said.
"My job as an opener is to go out there and try to get us off to a flyer and try and set up a game and push through and get a bigger score than 40.
"I love playing cricket for Australia at any opportunity. If you're under pressure it just adds to a bit of fun."
Finch's regular opening partner David Warner was bumped down the order to four, but came in at three after Usman Khawaja (9) perished early, to maintain a left/right-hand partnership. And Finch believes the hard-hitting left-hander will not have been fazed by his switch, despite Warner only lasting 11 balls, which yielded 20 runs.
"Davey has batted there in the middle order quite a bit in India in the IPL, it's not something he's uncomfortable with and he's not all that foreign to it. He played beautifully today," Finch said.
"In Twenty20 cricket I think that [left/right-hand partnership] can be so crucial through those middle parts. When you've got [Imran] Tahir who can spin it both ways it probably doesn't have that much of an affect. At the same time it's nice to have that option, always making the bowler change [from] left-hand to right-hand."
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