Chennai, Sep 22 (IANS): With as many as eight players, including Sachin Tendulkar, sidelined owing to injuries or otherwise not available, Mumbai Indians Thursday were permitted to field five foreigners instead of four in the playing eleven in the Nokia Champions League Twenty20 tournament commencing Friday.

Those on the injury list are Tendulkar, Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Ali Murtaza, Munaf Patel and Dhawal Kulkarni. Aditya Tare and Pawan Suyal, the other two among the 23 contracted players, are also not available for the tournament.

Their replacements are: Andrew Symonds, Dilhara Fernando, Rajagopal Sathish, Sarul Kanwar and Abu Nechim Ahmed.

The Mumbai Indians are to take on defending champions Chennai Super Kings in their opening Group A match here Saturday.

The prospect of facing a full-strength Super Kings with a team that is weighed down by injuries, however, does not faze Lasith Malinga who will have so much more pressure to deliver early breakthroughs.

"We always try to perform to our strength during a match and the result comes at the end of the day. All the players in Mumabi Indians team will be performing to their strength and that is it," said Malinga at a media interaction session here Thursday.

"We do not have any pressure. I think we know our abilities and trust our abilities. We have lot of young players but some have not played much of T-20 matches. But we have good senior players in our team," said Malinga.