CRICKET/World Cup final: A final between the two best sides will decide this eighth World Cup, but there is a danger the final itself may be decided 30 minutes before its start, when Ricky Ponting and Sourav Ganguly exchange team sheets, one tosses the coin and the other calls.

If Australia bat first they usually win. And if they score in excess of 200 they almost inevitably win.

But even if India win the toss and bat first, whether there will be a genuine contest at the Wanderers tomorrow comes down to Sachin Tendulkar - and the Australian opening bowlers who will try to stop him, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee.

Thus far Tendulkar is virtually unrivalled as the player of the tournament, a situation befitting not just the best batsman in the world but one of the finest and perhaps revered, Don Bradman notwithstanding, in history.

Tendulkar has never had a World Cup final as his stage, though, and if the whole of India expects him to succeed at a whim then there is no avoiding the fact this is a match full of wonderful cricketers. There is a popular piece of propaganda put around that for all his 65 international centuries Tendulkar tends not to deliver when the chips are down, that he adorns with his presence rather than his deeds.

It may be a fancy based on the massive assumptions as to his capabilities. Yet Tendulkar has been playing in finals of varying magnitudes, 28 in total since the first of them, the Hero Cup of April 1993. In that time he has passed 50 12 times on four of the occasions during a dizzy 12 months five years ago, going on to make a century. That is scarcely a dereliction of duty.

Nor can he be accused of failing to take on the best sides; 34 of his 304 innings have been against Australia, with six hundreds and seven 50s. He averages 48.88 against them, and has done better only against Zimbabwe among the Test countries.

Tendulkar has exhibited a wonderful level of skill these past few weeks, not merely content to display a superbly compact defence and the astounding blocked drives that leave mid-off and mid-on gawping, but flicking the ball away through the on side where lesser players are content to defend with a straight bat. Yet, at times he can seem strangely stiff at the start of an innings.

This is what McGrath and Lee will be attempting to exploit. If Tendulkar flourishes, India will win. If not then it is Australia. Such responsibility.

But first India must win the toss. The last time an India side successfully chased a total against Australia was almost five years ago, in the final of the Coca-Cola Cup in Sharjah, when Tendulkar opened and made 134.

Australia came to this World Cup as favourites and have done nothing to change that, winning their matches and all but the one against England with comfort.

India arrived out of form and with bickering about contracts simmering. Yet under Ganguly's captaincy and former New Zealand captain John Wright's quiet authority they have improved, losing only once, against Australia in their second match, when they were finding their feet.

By rights tomorrow should produce an occasion to set the blood racing. The toss permitting.