Australia captain Aaron Finch marked his 100th ODI with a third-ball duck as his difficult summer with the bat continued in the opening ODI against India.

Finch had been buoyant as he marked his ODI milestone by winning the toss and had no hesitation to bat, but his mood quickly darkened as he edged the third delivery he faced from Jasprit Bumrah for MS Dhoni to snare, leaving the Australians 1-0 after 1.3 overs.

Finch might have been relieved by India's decision to rest Bhuvneshwar Kumar from the early stages of this five-match series given the India quick took his wicket in each of the three ODIs played in Australia this summer. But Bumrah offers him little respite – his dismissal here was the fourth time in his past nine international innings across all formats that he has fallen victim to the 25-year-old from Ahmedabad with the stiff-arm action.

Finch has been under increasing pressure as his lean run stretches on – he scored 0 and 8 in the two T20 matches Australia won to open this tour – but on the eve of the ODI series was confident that recent tweaks to his batting technique had brought him close to an end of this lean patch.

It has now been 20 innings since Finch posted a half-century in limited-overs cricket for Australia, a span that stretches back to his world-record T20 knock of 172 in Zimbabwe last July.

Since that astonishing performance, Finch has flipped between formats, made his Test debut, been dropped, won the Big Bash and found run-scoring at its most difficult.

But changes to his technique and time spent playing against the white ball this year have the 32-year-old believing he's about to turn the corner with a significant score at the top of the order.

"The changes that I've made are really close to happening," Finch said.

"It could be one ball, could be two balls and you get in the middle and everything snaps back in and you start to feel good and get the flow back again.

"I'm really confident going into this series. It might sound strange after missing out for quite a while, but I feel really comfortable where my game is at, where it's going and at times you're prepared to wear a little bit of short term pain for long term game.

"This has been a bit longer pain than I would have hoped for.

"I can see that it's all going in the right direction and I feel really good about the next two series in particular."

Finch says the adjustments haven't been a reaction to any changes he made to play Test cricket, more a fine-tuning of his game he hopes will help him in general moving forward.

"There's nothing drastic about it; a few movement patterns," Finch said.

"At times if you're looking to change something you start thinking about that when you're batting and international cricket is hard enough without giving the ball 100 per cent of your focus and having to worry about where your feet are going, where your head's going, what your back-lift's doing, anything that can cloud your mind.

"It's a really difficult game."

Head coach Justin Langer praised Finch's leadership throughout his struggles, saying he was impressed with how his personality and attitude has remained consistent despite the lack of runs.

Former Australia batsman and national selector Mark Waugh said this week Finch looked "mentally gone" but the skipper was quick to dismiss those comments.

"Mark comes out and says quite a few things every now and then," he said.

"Some of them don't make a hell of a lot of sense lot of the time.

"Mentally gone – he hasn't been around the side, he's been commentating most of it from Sydney.

"Don't know how he's come to that decision."

While the runs have dried up, Finch says he's made a point of not letting his form affect the way he leads his team.

"I think it's important to remain level regardless of how you're going, whether you're flying or you're where I am at the moment and not getting as many runs as you would have liked," he said.

"As soon as you're up and down then the team starts to sense that and starts to almost play like that – you start to play on emotion so much.

"One of the things Australian cricket has been so good at for some years is that you play the opposition on skill not emotion. Remaining level is key to that.

"I feel as though I've done that really well, I feel as though my captaincy on the ground has been really good as well.

"Just a few runs and it will be all good."