This is where things start getting serious. Just over three months after winning 5-0 in cricket's version of the Garden of Eden – where their only distractions were a gaggle of Zimbabwean schoolkids and some gently blooming jacarandas – England suddenly face the very different prospect of Eden Gardens. When play starts tomorrow – or when Sachin Tendulkar comes out to bat, at any rate – England should face a screaming crowd of 100,000. (Englishmen tend to think that the Oval Test in 2000 was packed out, and it was, but only 87,000 made it into the ground – and that was all five days put together.) If they keep their nerve, they will be halfway there. England's aim tomorrow must be to continue the good work they started in the Ahmedabad and Bangalore Tests. One-day cricket is a different beast, but at least Nasser Hussain has the psychological edge over Sourav Ganguly, both as a captain and a batsman. And England have three big names available for selection again: Graham Thorpe, Andy Caddick and Darren Gough.

Even so, they enter the lion's den as underdogs, and their first dilemma is their own selection. Hussain has implied that one of Caddick, Gough and Matthew Hoggard will miss out. Since Hoggard, who once harboured ambitions to become a vet, now finds himself the teacher's pet, the battle for the remaining new-ball spot comes down to England's two most experienced bowlers. Gough's big-match temperament should give him the edge.

Then there's the top-order batting. England must first wait and see whether Marcus Trescothick has recovered from his bout of 'flu, and then decide whether they want to play four specialist batsmen plus Andy Flintoff at No. 5, or play five, and leave out one of Paul Collingwood or Ben Hollioake. Flintoff's miserable experiences in the Test series should persuade Hussain to keep him at No. 6. Jeremy Snape and Ashley Giles would then fight it out for the lone spinner's spot.

India's line-up presents England with two even bigger headaches. How to subdue the Ganguly/Tendulkar opening partnership? And how to keep out and score off Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh?

Ganguly may be a walking wicket in whites, but when he puts on the pyjamas his transformation is chameleon-like: in six one-day innings in 2001-02 his scores have been 127, 24, 24, 85, 111 and 9 (380 runs at over 63). Tendulkar has done almost as well, crashing 342 runs at 57. Overall, they have added 150-plus nine times. If England can get one of them early, the pressure will be on India's brittle middle order. Gough's ability to target the cream of the opposition's batting could be the key.

Kumble and Harbhajan need to be neutered too. The absence of the injured Craig White is a blow here, because his footwork sets the standards for everyone else, but England must believe that they can get down the track to Kumble and disrupt his line and length. Shaun Pollock has done it, and so can the likes of Nick Knight, Thorpe and Hussain. The one thing they mustn't do it allow Kumble to manoeuvre them onto the back foot, where they will be sitting ducks and could end up scoring a few too.

England's only previous one-day game at Calcutta was the 1987 World Cup final defeat against Australia, when Mike Gatting made the reverse-sweep a dirty word, so here's a chance to clean up their act. An actual victory is against the odds; another moral one most certainly isn't.

England (possible XI): 1 Marcus Trescothick, 2 Nick Knight, 3 Nasser Hussain (capt), 4 Graham Thorpe, 5 Michael Vaughan, 6 Andrew Flintoff, 7 Ben Hollioake, 8 Jeremy Snape, 9 James Foster (wk), 10 Darren Gough, 11 Matthew Hoggard.

Lawrence Booth is assistant editor of Wisden.com.

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