The game of flannelled fools, they called it. The flannels have long faded from modern cricket, but the fools remain. Beginning May 14, more than a billion of them will cease normal life for 40 days to celebrate cricket's greatest carnival: the World Cup. The Cup has gone back to its ancestral home in gloomy Old Blighty this time but it is here, in the sunshine of the subcontinent, that its heart lies. As a survey in the UK revealed, barely 18 per cent of Englishmen were aware that the Cup was on, but in India a nation is ready and waiting. And how. Cricket frenzy is reaching a crescendo in the media. Companies are pouring in money into cricket advertising. Flights out of India to England are chock-a-block. And so there isn't much protest as the Election Commission slates the polls for after the Cup. Fortunately then, Indians don't have to leave their TV sets to do more mundane things like, oh, lining up for the polls and deciding the future of their country.

Yes, cricket fever has gripped India -- and India Today. Some of our editors are part of that westward stream. But they will enable us to bring you the best of our national pastime, as they always have. In the past year, we have produced 48 stories on cricket, three cover stories and a special collector's edition devoted to the World Cup. Apart from a host of the world's best cricket writers, we have stationed Associate Editor Rohit Brijnath in England for the duration of the Cup. Brijnath, as he roams the island, visiting teams, checking strategies and soaking in the atmosphere, finds the real excitement being generated not by the locals but by visiting and resident Indians, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans, carrying their exuberance and hopes with them. "It's like the subcontinent has temporarily taken over England," says Brijnath. When they return, let's hope the Cup returns with them.

(Aroon Purie)