He’s proud of where he’s from – the place, the region, its people – and doesn’t need to be prodded to give thanks for its part in his journey.

Since bat thickness at the elite level was limited by the game’s lawmakers last year, the hulking New Balance blades he’d been using have been farmed out to Geelong Cricket Club teammates. A recent spring clean at home with fiancé Amy unearthed enough excess gear to fill 10 kitbags, much of which will head down the Princes Highway to his original club, Colac West, where youngsters already get around in his old Victorian sweaters, shirts and tracksuits.

It’s rare to find a club in the district where someone doesn’t use one of his old bats or barely-worn gloves. These might seem small gestures for a well-paid professional, but they make “Finchy” all the more loved.

Sometimes his altruism produces tricky moments, such as when he was sharing the house with state and national teammate Glenn Maxwell. “A mate rang up and said, ‘I need a bat, do you have any?’” Finch recalls. “I didn’t, but Maxy had about 10 lying around in his room so I gave him one of those.

“Maxy was looking for it a few days later, and I told him I’d given it to a mate. He said, ‘You’ve given away my Test debut bat!’ I rang my mate back and said, ‘I’ve gotta do a trade with you!’”

For every stride he’s taken in the game – for city, franchise, state and country – a smaller step in his cricket grounding laid the foundation. At Colac South West primary school he angled for a hit with brother Jason, three years his senior, on the little concrete pitch with the tarmac topping. “They’re my first real memories of playing cricket – trying to get a game with the older kids and being told, ‘Thanks for your time, but you’re not welcome.’ I kept persisting.”

Every game day dawns with an echo of the excitement he felt arriving at a ground to watch Jason play – in the Colac West under 17s or C grade in the afternoon – with his whites stashed under the seat, just in case. “I didn’t want Jason to think I wanted to play, but on the off chance there was only 10 I’d have my gear ready to go. I’d bat at 11, field all day and not get a bowl. But I just loved it.”

Every six he hits – too many to count – stems from the very first one, in a junior final, which cleared the square leg fence of Colac West’s big ground, off Micah Buchanan, of the famous Colac sporting clan. Every catch started with that first one in A grade, when he was a 13-year-old wicketkeeper surrounded by men (and a 15-year-old Luke Hodge “bowling rockets”). “I dropped one a bit later and copped a spray off the first slip.”

Every step up in class has mirrored his progression at Geelong – a 70 in the fourths on Melbourne Cup day aged 13, and 30 in his only other game of the season; the same scores in the same two games in the thirds the next summer. By 16 he was a first XI Premier cricketer, and the rest is very satisfying history.

His mother’s birthday is December 23, and when cricket permits the Finchs can be found in a Colac pub catching up with the locals. People reel off memories of games gone by – not just for Victoria, Australia or the Renegades, but in the juniors at West, or B grade out on the tiny school ground at Alvie. “Coming back every time, talking to people you’ve had an impact on just by playing a game you love, that’s pretty special. People have a vested interest because they’ve helped you out, they enjoy your success.”

People have given him their time – from under 12s through to Geelong, where he credits Clinton Peake with driving him hard and developing his game enormously. To play for them in their back yard – as he’ll do when he leads the Renegades against the Sixers at GMHBA Stadium on January 3 – humbles him greatly. This is his “tribe”, and he loves doing them proud.

To see what meeting a local hero means to kids tells him he’s looking at himself not so long ago. “That’s what takes you a while to get your head around as a kid – you see people playing on TV and you think they’re from another world. You’re from Colac, a little country town, you can never dream that can be you one day.

“But meet them and you start to understand, it doesn’t matter where you’re from, if you try hard, try your best, practise, do all the right things, anyone can do it.”