The Surfer

She's [former New Zealand physio Kate Stalker] contracted to New Zealand Cricket until after the tournament, but like former coach Mark Greatbatch, bowling coach Shane Jurgensen, high performance boss Roger Mortimer and assistant coach Mark O'Donnell, Stalker's role as a member of the Black Caps touring party ended when John Wright took charge just before Christmas.

Our World Cup preparations began in earnest with a training camp in Pakistan, which was followed by a triangular one-day tournament involving India and Pakistan in Sharjah. The trips were well meaning but, even now, it is difficult to work out how the 45 degree heat and slow, low pitches in Lahore and Dubai were ever going to prepare us for cold, wet seamer-friendly conditions in England in May.

It was while we were in Lahore that the players' contract dispute with the England and Wales Cricket Board erupted. With the squad selected and the fees agreed between the captain, Alec Stewart, and the ECB our contracts were presented to us. It is fair to say, they did not go down very well.

The obvious home advantage to be gleaned on slow, low pitches may dissipate as the tournament progresses. The World Cup has been played twice before on the subcontinent and in neither did India or Pakistan reach the final. In 1987, they both astonishingly went out in the semi-finals, to England and Australia respectively. In 1996, after India beat Pakistan in the quarter-finals they themselves were eliminated by a Sri Lankan side who changed the face of the game with their unfettered willingness to attack.

By 2007, there had been another change of heart. This time, there were 16 teams in four groups of four, with the top two from each making it to the Super Eight. The idea was clearly to make the top teams lay as many golden eggs as possible. Instead, with India and Pakistan making their exit in the first round, the ICC ended up with a gigantic omelette on its face. The ‘dream’ match-up in Barbados between India and Pakistan became Bangladesh against Ireland, and thousands of hotel-room cancellations made it a disaster for everyone concerned. That experience has so scarred the ICC that the format for 2011 more or less ensures that none of the fancied teams can miss out on the quarter-finals.

It’s bizarre to think how toxic the advertising really has become, and how much it has vitiated what would otherwise be a great viewing pleasure. To put it in perspective, I’ve happily risked sunstroke, dehydration, hypothermia, police brutality and mob violence to watch sports live, but I find it near-impossible to sit through commercials in the comfort of my drawing room. During the average ODI, you will see the same ads aired 100-odd times in succession. Even full frontal nudity or an SRT straightdrive would pall, given that sort of repetition.

Expectedly, there has been some debate over the composition of the Indian team. I think the selectors and team management did what was best. I wouldn’t have done anything different had I been the selector.

While the country also starts saying a billion prayers that the unmatched greatness of their Sachin can be sealed by the ultimate reward of lifting the Cup in his home city next month, Tendulkar is able to shoulder this unimaginable burden of expectation with serenity by recalling his father’s advice.

The longer the format, the longer cricket hovers. A day is planned around the timings of some matches. A two-hour work meeting is a pain under any circumstances but more so because you can’t surreptitiously keep glancing at your phone with just five colleagues around you. Often you need to find an excuse for an early lunch, to catch half an hour of the run-chase in the cafeteria. Or to make that phone call to ask your buddy about how the pitch is playing.

I’m sure all sports fans feel this way but cricket brings to it an added dimension of time. I’ve had similar experiences with football and basketball but those games are on your mind only for a short time. Ninety minutes. Done by the time you’re finished with one boring lecture in college. But cricket – Tests and ODIs, at least – mess with you all day.

It is a given that the India matches will be played to packed stadiums. The real challenge is to fill up stadiums for the non-India matches. Only if there are sizeable crowds for these games can we claim to have matured as a cricket-watching nation. It is cricket's biggest stage and hyper-nationalism, central to Indian cricket-watching, cannot continue to be the sport's only selling point in India. Take the FIFA World Cup: not only were matches involving South Africa well-attended, but most matches were played to sizeable crowds across the country in June-July 2010.

Overall, however, the fact that this year's World Cup has been inaugurated in Dhaka is symbolic of the desire of Bangladesh's people to see some of the best sportsmanship relating to cricket to be on display in this country. Ours has always been a hospitable society and this trait in the national character has once more been amply demonstrated by the zeal and euphoria with which we have welcomed so many foreign teams to the country

Bell is expected to bat at five in the World Cup, having played most of his one-day games, both for Warwickshire and England, in the top three of the order. He does not mind admitting that he prefers to bat higher up. "But you can't always do what you want, you have to do what the team is asking of you," he says, almost as if he is reading from a teamsmanship manual. "And my game is flexible enough to bat in any position. Plus, I'll be playing a fair amount of spin in the middle order, and I see that as a strong area of my game now. Spin is going to be crucial in this World Cup."

Kirsten and mental conditioning coach Paddy Upton joined in these games, in which S. Sreesanth was the victim of many pranks. In one game, Zaheer Khan crossed towards the goal from the left, and Sreesanth, who was the goalkeeper, intercepted the ball with his hand. Khan shouted, “Foul, foul!”, and a bewildered Sreesanth dropped the ball, only for Kirsten to come up and tap it into the goal. Sreesanth’s face dropped as the team erupted in laughter.