An Indian team under both internal and external pressure attempts to get its 11^th hour arithmetic right, ahead of tomorrow's crucial game against Zimbabwe.

After a standard net session this morning, all debate revolved around the opening slot, the thinking being that a good beginning, in these conditions, is half the battle.

"As of this point in time," coach John Wright told me at the end of the morning nets, "my thinking is that Sachin Tendulkar should open.

"I also believe that Virender Sehwag should be used to the maximum possible, which means he should open."

And then Wright added the rider: "It is of course the captain's prerogative to decide the batting order."

Captain Sourav Ganguly is, for now, tight-lipped on his thinking, on this and other issues.

Meanwhile, the team is en masse worried about stories coming out of India, about protests and demonstrations outside their homes and, in the cases of players like Mohammad Kaif, even direct attacks.

The tendency among the players is to blame the commentators on television for their plight -- they believe that the commentators have en masse rubbished their performance, without making due allowances for various factors; this inflammatory commentary, they think, has put their homes and loved ones at risk.

For now, they see their task as putting all such extraneous matters behind them, and focusing on the game tomorrow -- a turnaround in Harare, as they know only too well, will be all that is needed to change the mood back home.