Melbourne:
Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni today thanked the Indian supporters, who turned in huge numbers at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which recorded a phenomenal attendance of 86, 876 in a World Cup game that did not feature home team Australia.
Asked about the crowd support after India’s 130-win over South Africa, Dhoni said, “Well, I’m glad somebody asked that question because the attendance was close to 86,000 or 87,000. Let’s give the benefit of doubt, 20,000 to the South African fans (everyone started laughing), but to get like over 50,000 people in Australia, I think it just adds on to atmosphere that gets created. It starts from the warm-up, and after the National Anthem, it just multiplies.”
“It’s always good to play in front of good support, and the kind of support we are talking about, even when we are playing in India, there are stadiums, some of the stadiums which don’t have that kind of capacity, so even when they are full they’re close to 40,000, so today we are seeing in Australia close to more than 50,000 to 60,000 people supporting us,” Dhoni said, profusely thanking the fans for their unmatched support.
“Definitely we need to give a lot of credit to them, so I think it’s really heartening to see people coming from all over, not only India, a lot of them are from Australia, from England they have come. All of it feels good to play in front of big crowds,” the skipper said.
