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After horror BBL, time away has Finch ready to play

After a poor BBL|10, the national limited-overs captain declares he'll be ready for the T20 tour of NZ

Even though he concedes it might sound "pretty stupid", Aaron Finch says he feels good with the bat after his leanest KFC BBL season.

Finch scored just 179 runs in 13 innings in BBL|10, averaging 13.76 for the season – the lowest of any of his 10 campaigns for the Melbourne Renegades.

Following the end of the regular season, in which the Renegades finished with the wooden spoon for the second straight year, Finch says he did not touch a cricket bat for the 10 days he had off before packing his bags to fly to New Zealand for Australia's five-match T20 series.

"I'm feeling a lot better about my game," he said today from hotel quarantine in Christchurch.

"The one thing when you're out of nick or you're not getting any runs, you're not quite sure where to turn.

"Putting the bat down for a while, looking at some footage and assessing where you think your game is at, and being realistic about it, was as much as I needed to do.

"I know that I can still play."

Sydney Sixers too strong for Scorchers and go back-to-back

Finch will have to wait a few more days before he can pick up his bat and use it the nets as the Australians undergo 14 days of quarantine after arriving in New Zealand yesterday.

The tourists are in hard lockdown for the first three days before they can use the gym on day four. From day five, the squad can train together in isolation for up to four hours. The first T20 is on Monday, February 22.

While Finch has been light on runs, only David Warner has more T20 runs for Australia than the Victorian, who holds the highest T20 International score of 172.

The right-hander says he will use Australia's training sessions to fine-tune his game ahead of the series opener at Hagley Oval.

"It's just about making sure that when I turn up for these isolation training sessions that I'm working on specific things and not just training for the sake of it," Finch said.

"I feel pretty good to be honest. It might sound pretty stupid not coming off the back of many runs.

"It's international cricket and I'm ready to go."

Qantas T20I tour of New Zealand 2021

Australia squad: Aaron Finch (c), Ashton Agar, Jason Behrendorff, Mitchell Marsh, Glenn Maxwell, Ben McDermott, Riley Meredith, Josh Philippe, Jhye Richardson, Kane Richardson, Daniel Sams, Tanveer Sangha, D'Arcy Short, Marcus Stoinis, Ashton Turner, Andrew Tye, Matthew Wade, Adam Zampa.

New Zealand squad: TBC

1st T20: February 22, Hagley Oval, Christchurch, 5pm AEDT

2nd T20: February 25, University of Otago Oval, Dunedin, 12noon AEDT

3rd T20: March 03, Sky Stadium, Wellington, 5pm AEDT

4th T20: March 05, Eden Park, Auckland, 5pm AEDT

5th T20: March 07, Bay Oval, Tauranga, 12noon AEDT

All matches will be shown live in Australia on Fox Cricket and Kayo