“It’s a situation we have not been in before. We are not playing for the Ashes or a World Cup, we are playing for money. We don’t know how we are going to react but I am sure there will be a few nerves around,” said Collingwood.

“I don’t know how much more pressure you can feel than playing for England in a Test. I have never been as nervous in my life as I was in the last Ashes Test in 2005 – can it get worse than that?

“What it has done has created a lot of interest. the concept of playing just for money is not something we have seen so it is making people talk.”

Given the public disquiet about the Stanford venture, perhaps it was not surprising yesterday that new captain Kevin Pietersen suggested a donation would be made to charity if England won the match on November 1.

qAUSTRALIA captain Ricky Ponting broke his India hoodoo on the first day of the Test series in Bangalore, scoring 123 out of Australia’s 254-4. 

Ponting, out leg before to Harbhajan Singh late in the day, had averaged 12 in his previous eight Tests in India. He put on 166 for the second wicket with Simon Katich (66). Ponting said: “I’m as pleased with that innings as I probably have been with any innings I’ve ever played.”

Michael Hussey was four runs short of a half-century when stumps were drawn. Zaheer Khan, who took the early wicket of Matthew Hayden, struck again with the second new ball to remove Michael Clarke (11), while Anil Kumble was unlucky not to get among the wickets.