Paine's relief after crossing his fingers on opening day

Relief was the primary emotion for Australia captain Tim Paine moments after he secured his first Test victory as captain on the final morning in Perth.

Australia's quicks battered India's lower order while Nathan Lyon took his match haul to eight wickets to secure a 146-run success, the team's first Test victory since Durban 10 months ago after which they were hit by the era-defining ball-tampering controversy.

Paine admitted there had been some "crossed fingers" when Australia batted on the opening day, the unknown quantities of the Perth pitch at the forefront of everyone's mind. He lauded the efforts of inexperienced opening pair Marcus Harris and Aaron Finch to put on 112 for the first wicket

"It's probably more of a relief at the moment, that first win has taken a while with everything that has happened so really proud of all our players and staff," Paine said. "We've worked really hard. We know we can keep getting better and it's really good to get a little bit of reward and now we turn our focus to the MCG.

"Day one was a bit of a funny one, we won the toss and decided to have a bat. Sort of crossed our fingers and hoped it played pretty well. Actually think the wicket played well for the majority of the Test, but for Marcus and Aaron to get us none for 100 was brilliant and probably the difference in the end.

"It was a difficult Test, both Adelaide and here have been really tough Tests - two really competitive sides with good fast-bowling attacks. Been hard work for the batters, this pitch was flying through."

Lyon was named Player of the Match and claimed the key wicket of Virat Kohli on the fourth evening which all but assured Australia of victory

"It's great to have Gaz, every team wants a spinner like Nathan Lyon," Paine said. "He loves bowling to the best players in the world."

India captain Virat Kohli conceded his team had been outplayed. Though he went with four quick bowlers only to see Lyon do much damage he said playing a spinner had never crossed his mind.

"As a team I think we played well in patches which we can hold onto. Australia played much better than us with the bat - 330 on that pitch we felt was a bit too much. They deserved to win.

"When we looked at the pitch we didn't think about [playing Ravindra Jadeja] but I thought Nathan bowled really well. We never thought we wanted to consider a spinner, thought four fast bowlers would be enough."