Both India and Australia will not have warm-up games before the finals, which begin at The Oval on June 7.

Australia will remain in Great Britain after the WTC final for five games against England beginning June 16.

All the guys have gone and practiced individual programs during this (final) period. We had guys who played cricket here in England. Guys have been in the IPL and some guys have spent some time at home, Cary was quoted as saying by the ICC.

Coming together now, we do feel the excitement before the Test Championship and I think it will be a retrospective question as to whether we should have played a warm-up match.

As a player I feel like we will be ready for the first match, so I think it will be one of those topics that is talked about after the test match. Australia lost the recent series in India, but have made significant strides in four matches and even won in Indore. The team learned a lesson from that.

We learned a lot… the fact that we were able to bounce back (after two zeros) and win in Indore (in the third Test) showed a lot of character, and the last Test was a draw.

So we walked away with confidence knowing that we were good enough in those conditions, and there were just a few things we wanted to eliminate…and now the grand final is here; that’s what the last two years have led to.

We’ll wait and see what the Oval looks like – maybe it’ll have grass on it, maybe it’ll be dry – but it’s a special opportunity to play in the grand final, so to speak, and obviously the Ashes are not far off either, he said.