Finch surgery update as World Cup race begins

Australia's limited overs skipper Aaron Finch has had a successful operation to repair cartilage in his right knee with the T20 World Cup to begin in October.

Finch went under the knife on Thursday, his first day out of his mandatory two-week hotel quarantine stint after returning from Barbados.

A statement from Cricket Australia said the operation had been successful and the 34-year-old would now begin the recovery process that is expected to take up to 10 weeks.

The full 10-week time-frame would take Finch through to October 21. The T20 World Cup – held in the UAE and Oman after being shifted from India – will start with a group stage on October 17.

Australia's involvement, at the Super 12 stage, is expected to begin around a week later, or about October 24.

Australia have been grouped with England, South Africa and the West Indies along with two yet-to-be-determined qualifiers for the tournament.

Australia will play each of those teams once, with the top two teams from that group then progressing to the semi-finals.

Finch suffered the cartilage injury in St Lucia in July but was able to lead Australia in five T20s against the Windies, before reaggravating the issue in the final game of the series, which they lost 4-1.

Finch sat out of the three ODIs against the West Indies that followed in Barbados, with Alex Carey taking over as captain in that format. As the squad headed to Bangladesh, Finch returned home on a commercial flight via London to begin his hotel quarantine.

"I had a little injury just doing a fielding session before I left – I've never had any knee problems – and it just started to get a bit sore," Finch told SEN Radio recently.

"The more that we trained and played … stopping and starting, turning, that kind of thing was causing it some issues.

"So I had a couple of scans in the West Indies and there was a little bit of cartilage, a bit of meniscus damage.