Cricket's biggest spectacle is giving the world's most watched sport, soccer, a run for its money. With the event kicking off today, the sub-continent where 90 per cent of the game's half billion viewers live, is throbbing with suppressed excitement.

It will go on for six weeks or 43 days, so at least one chamber of commerce is worrying about the loss of productivity of employees.

“India Inc may register a significant drop in productivity during the month of February-March 2011 as one in five employees plan to take time off or reduce working hours to watch the ICC World Cup” says Assocham.

It is going to be very hard providing security cover also, requiring at least 3,000 policemen on the day the matches are played.

Adios amigos?

Though Sachin is forever, this World Cup may well be his last. He will be 41 when the next one is played.

India has not won a single World Cup in the five that he has played in. So there is additional interest: will he be last time lucky?

Even if he is not, when he walks off the ground after his last match, it is going to be an emotional moment for 500 million Indians.

For many other players, too, it will be the last Cup: Zaheer, Harbhajan, Sehwag... all will rotate off the stage. Not a dry eye in India.

Who will win?

India, Australia, England, South Africa and Sri Lanka are the toughest teams. Four of them ought to make it to the quarter finals.

But the annals of cricket are strewn with stunning results – India, of all teams, won the 1983 World Cup – so New Zealand and Pakistan could also make it to the quarters.

As, indeed, could Bangladesh which gave New Zealand a proper drubbing last year – 5-0.

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