Indian fans always create great atmosphere, says Finch

There were hardly any Australian fans at the Oval, which was flooded by Indian supporters, here on Sunday. It was a home atmosphere for Virat Kohli’s men as loudspeakers belted out Hindi songs and the fans matched the cacophony with drums and dholaks.

Australian skipper Aaron Finch was asked if he was surprised to see so few Australian fans at the ground and that they get outnumbered even at Australian stadiums.

“No, I wasn’t surprised,” he said with a straight face. “India have amazing support everywhere they go around the world. Their fans are very vocal.

“They’re great to play in front of because they provide so much atmosphere. They’re passionate about the game. And being on the other side of it, it’s not ideal, but at the end of the day, no matter where you play, you can play in Melbourne, you can play in Hobart, they’re always going to outnumber you.

“They are so loud, and they’re a happy crowd. They appreciate good cricket. Obviously, they’re there to watch India do well, but they appreciate really good cricket, and when they’re playing their music and chants are going up, it’s a pretty great atmosphere to be a part of -- when you win,” he remarked.

Finch also lauded the Indian batsmen and bowlers for assessing the conditions well and playing accordingly en route their second win.

“I think they took their time, obviously, and they assessed the conditions really quickly and probably identified that they were going to be the two hardest or the two biggest threats early on in the innings,” Finch said on Indian batsmen countering Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins at the start. “It felt as though they swallowed their pride and really pulled back a gear and made sure that they got through them first 10 overs, and when you've got world-class players on good wickets and you've got 10 wickets in hand, you can start to up the ante a bit earlier.

“I think not getting wickets early on was probably key there. To have them batting deep into the innings, that just gives them so many options where they can shuffle (Hardik) Pandya up the order and Dhoni. So yeah, I think they played it really well, and probably negated our biggest threats early on,” he explained.

Australia tried to follow India’s batting template during their chase, but it didn’t work as well as they had hoped for.

“I think that India bowled really well with the new ball,” said Finch. “I thought if we could have some wickets in hand and some batters in toward the back end of the innings, we could potentially do some damage. But we probably just kept losing wickets when we were trying to up the run rate, and then as you know, when new batters come in, the run rate creeps up slowly. When it gets to 10, 12 and over, it cranks up pretty quickly, as well. Maybe a couple too many runs to chase, but also I felt as though we were in a decent position as we were moving along, we just lost wickets at the key times,” he reasoned.