Finn unfazed by heightened pressure

Steven Finn believes that his first taste of defeat as an England Test cricketer will help to make him a better player in the long run, as he prepares to return to his home ground at Lord's for the series decider against Pakistan on Thursday. However, with the hype surrounding this winter's Ashes being cranked up an extra notch, he refused to be drawn into a war of words with Australia's opening batsman, Shane Watson, who earlier this week singled him out as the potential weak link in England's attack.

Finn, whose Test career coincided with the start of England's run of six victories in a row against Bangladesh at Chittagong in March, admitted he was "gutted" to suffer his first loss in England colours, as Pakistan overcame some familiar jitters on the fourth day to win a thrilling contest by four wickets. He claimed just one wicket in 23 overs in the match, his least productive outing of the year, but insisted he would treat the experience as another step in his ongoing development at the top level.

"I hate losing games of cricket," said Finn. "Every game that I play in, whether it's for my club side, Middlesex or England, every game you lose leads to a period of reflection. There were areas where I didn't bowl as well as I could have done and that might have contributed towards us losing the game. That's something I'm very aware of, and in the grand scheme of things you learn a lot from that having lost that Test."

Whereas Finn's 6'7" frame had enabled him to harvest wickets in his early outings of the summer -not least on his last trip to Lord's in May when he claimed nine in the match against Bangladesh, including second-innings figures of 5 for 87 - Finn found the going rather harder on a true Oval surface last week, when he and his team-mates were thwarted by the experienced Mohammad Yousuf and the rapidly improving Azhar Ali, whose 69-run stand for the fifth wicket proved to be the decisive partnership of the game.

"We've identified the areas where we could do better, and hope to do better in this next game," Finn said. "At times felt I leaked too many four-balls, I'd bowl five decent balls then one four-ball, which was very frustrating and I didn't mean to do. During that middle period, when Yousuf and Azhar Ali were going well, we could have done with me drying it up a little bit, but that's cricket, you learn every time you step out on the pitch. It's not a mindset thing or a technical thing. I'm just going to focus more on putting the ball in the right areas."

The phrase "right areas" is perhaps the most lampooned in international cricket, but as far as Finn is concerned, it is a mantra that he expects to serve him well as he concentrates on the line and length that his role model and coach at Middlesex, Angus Fraser, made his watchword during his own international career in the 1990s.

"I think I've got what it takes to bowl under pressure," he said. "I've got a repeatable action and I know I know what I'm doing with the ball and where to bowl it. Having the people around me that I have, Fraser and David Saker [England's bowling coach], and people who've played a lot of international cricket, I have people to turn to in the tough times, because that is the nature of international cricket, people go through hard periods. But people come out the other side of tough periods as well, as Alastair Cook showed with his hundred this week."

After a relatively gentle introduction to Test cricket against two brittle batting line-ups in Bangladesh and Pakistan, the presence of Yousuf for last week's third Test represented a significant step-up in class for Finn. However, he reiterated his belief that - with or without a player of such stature in the opposition ranks - the four-man attack that had swept all before it this summer was still good enough to secure a decisive victory at Lord's this week.

"Obviously Yousuf is a good player, you can't take anything away from that, but we've bowled Pakistan out for 72 and 80 so far, so there's a batting collapse waiting to happen," he said. "They've had two innings where they've played well and put partnerships together, but at no stage have they got away from us. Their top score is just over 300, so we're not at all disappointed by that. We feel as though we are doing the right thing as bowlers, and them having Mohammad Yousuf in the team doesn't make them a different team at all."

Having sat out the one-dayers against Australia last month to undergo a strength and conditioning course, Finn feels he is a fitter and more effective bowler now than he was at the start of the summer, with his pace topping 90mph at times during the Oval Test. However, he will be running up against the Aussies soon enough, and though he remains modest about his prospect of making the cut for the Ashes, it's already clear from Watson's pre-emptive strike that they expect him both to make the tour, and to be a significant factor.

Watson, who has been shortlisted as one of the ICC's World Players of the Year after returning to the Australian team as an opener during last summer's Ashes campaign in England, took it upon himself to fill the shoes of Glenn McGrath in targeting England's players. "We can make the most of Finn's inexperience," he said. "We want to test his durability as a bowler. It will be so foreign for him - he doesn't know what to expect in Australia."

Finn, however, refused to rise to the bait. "It's up to me first to be put on that plane to go to the Ashes, and I have to bowl well to warrant my place," he said. "There's competition for places, and there are a lot of good fast bowlers in the English set-up. But as far as what Shane Watson has said, I'm not concerning myself at all about it. If people want to concern themselves with me, and waste their mental energy on me, that's their business. But it doesn't faze me whatsoever. All I do is turn around at the end of my mark and go through my processes, whether I'm playing for club or country."