India-Pakistan Cricket Frenzy

You've heard India's mad about cricket, right? Well today it's about bragging rights for the next four years between India and arch-rival Pakistan, as the two teams meet for all the marbles for the winner-take-all, loser-goes-home semifinal of the Cricket World Cup in Mohali, Pakistan — and in India, at least, it seems as though a billion people are holding their breath.

All the rules are suspended when it comes to the match, it seems. The PM is playing hooky. The politicians are suddenly pretending that there's something to be gained from jumping the queue on the diplomatic dialogue with Islamabad, and wannabe Bollywood stars are vowing to strip their kit off — just like their counterparts in lil Paraguay. Even the International Cricket Council is suspending its rules, granting a last-minute reprieve to TV channels that it had denied accreditation because they'd allegedly been showing highlights that were practically as long as the match itself.

Yours truly will be hunkered down at the Foreign Correspondents' Club with a ready supply of Tuborg, hoping that nothing newsworthy occurs. But then, that's not exactly the world turned topsy turvy.