New Delhi: After a week where the focus shifted dramatically from action on the field to action off it, England and Pakistan will face each other for the first time since The Oval Test in Monday's Twenty20 International at Bristol.
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) had earlier revealed intentions to play an International XI if Pakistan withdrew from the tour.
For Pakistan, Shoaib Akhtar is back after recovering from his ankle injury while Mohammad Asif showed his ability during the final Test.
And the inclusion of Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, Abdul Razzaq, Shahid Afridi and Shoaib Malik has surely boosted Pakistan's morale ahead of the twenty20 match and the ODI series.
Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer, asked if he felt vindicated, said: "I'm not going to comment on that really, there's no case for that. What's happened in the past week has not been good for cricket and we just have to leave that alone now and just get on with the rest of the tour."
"I'm just pleased that we're here and we're going to play cricket and that's fantastic. We can now prepare for the World Cup which is the whole point of playing these One-Day Internationals."
England captain Andrew Strauss says: "From our point of view we're just going to concentrate on the cricket side and anything to do with non-cricketing matters, there are regulations in place and systems in place to deal with that."
"From the players’ point of view it is completely irrelevant for us to look at that side of things, we just concentrate on what's going on the pitch and from that point of view we're very pleased with what went on in the Test series, winning the Test series and we're excited about going out against Pakistan again and hopefully we can win the One-Dayers as well."
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