Australian captain Aaron Finch was a visibly happy man after his team’s remarkable 35-run win over India that sealed the series for them. This is Australia’s first ODI series win in over two years and the first time they have won a bilateral ODI series in India in nearly a decade. “Unbelievable, the resilience and fight we showed, being 0-2 down, it would’ve been easy to roll over, but the fight we showed makes it a great achievement,” said Finch in the post-match presentation ceremony.
On Wednesday, Australia defended a target of 273 to remarkably complete the turnaround and win the series. Australia’s batsmen have been coping criticism due to their repeated failures against India over the past four months and in this series, Usman Khawaja and Peter Handscomb scored centuries while Finch himself seemed to have broken out of his poor run of form. Ashton Turner’s stunning 84 off 43 balls in Mohali gave Australia the win in the fourth ODI.
“Proud of the group. If you just go with attacking batsmen in these conditions, you’ll struggle. You need good batsmanship on these wickets,” said Finch. Having made his ODI debut in 2013, Finch has never been part of a victorious Australian squad in India.
“I’ve been coming here for a while now, trying to win, hadn’t happened. That’s why this makes it special,” he said. With David Warner and Steve Smith expected to make a comeback during the World Cup, Finch said that this series gives Australia the confidence to put up a good defence of their title.
“People have written us off for a while, we knew the style and plans we wanted to play with are all there and can win us the World Cup. It’s about believing we’re good enough, we did that in four out of the five games. Great series all around,” said the Australian captain.
Stay updated with the latest sports news across Cricket, Football, Chess, and more. Catch all the action with real-time live cricket score updates and in-depth coverage of ongoing matches.
