Indians heave a collective sigh of relief

“Tendulkar is 100 per cent fit and he is playing tomorrow,” Shukla said, while stressing that there never was any injury to the master batsman. “There was no injury. It was just as a precautionary measure that Tendulkar did not come out to field in yesterday’s match,” Shukla said.

Tendulkar had also said yesterday that there was nothing serious and it was just a case of a stiff hamstring.

Nonetheless, the news of Tendulkar’s fitness has perked up the Indian camp. There is no under-estimating the importance of tomorrow’s game as it is more than two years now since India won a final of a tournament involving three or more teams. They have had an excellent run in the series so far, surprising even their die-hard critics, but they realise it will be back to square one if they fail to win the final tomorrow. The point was stressed by none other than Tendulkar himself when he said the team would have to leave behind the successes in league matches and start afresh for the final.

“Saturday is an important day for us. Whatever we have done in this tournament till now, we have to leave it back and start afresh,” Tendulkar had said after India’s 63-run victory against Sri Lanka yesterday. “There is nothing like lifting the trophy,” he said.

India are perhaps best prepared to set that record straight here. As skipper Saurav Ganguly said this may not be the best ever Indian one-day squad but it certainly was the first time that the Indians had done consistently well on foreign soil.

India come into the final with four victories in six league matches, one of which was abandoned due to rain.

Barring yesterday’s easy win against Sri Lanka, all the other victories have come under pressure situations, and more importantly, while chasing, something which the Indians have not been very comfortable doing earlier.

Another remarkable thing is that India are finally clicking as a unit. There have been contributions from every member of the team which has eased the pressure on the likes of Tendulkar.

TEAMS (FROM)

India: Saurav Ganguly (captain), Virender Sehwag, Dinesh Mongia, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Mohammad Kaif, V V S Laxman, Ajay Ratra, Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, Ashish Nehra, Tinu Yohannan.

England: Nasser Hussain (captain), Marcus Trescothick, Nick Knight, Graham Thorpe, Michael Vaughan, Ronnie Irani, Andrew Flintoff, Paul Collingwood, Ashley Giles, Jeremy Snape, Alex Tudor, Darren Gough, Dominic Cork, Mathew Hoggard.