Go away, they were told. In a heavy, disbelieving silence, there was a scraping of chairs, a shuffle of feet and one by one India's seven frontline batsmen-30,000-plus one-day runs, 67 centuries, telephone-number incomes and telephone directory-sized fan clubs behind them-left the room. They were being ejected from their own team meeting after a crushing defeat to Australia, the failed pilots of a mission struggling to take flight.

ON CLOUD NINE: Ganguly celebrates the fall of a Zimbabwean wicket

Go away, they were told, because you have let the rest of us down again. Go away, think about what you have done, talk about it and find a way to sort this out. Go away knowing that India's chances at the World Cup go with you.

It's that time of our lives again. When the Indian cricket team lives by the seat of its pants, flirts with death, glory and godawful mediocrity in between, tries to shake off the clutter of average performances and the rattling distraction of empty statistics to stand up against the best in their line of business. The World Cup, in other words, and this time in South Africa, India is taking its time to show up at the party.

STRIKE FORCE: Tendulkar and Srinath must keep firing for India to progress to the Super Six; Indian supporters

Sourav Ganguly's men went from being outside contenders for a semi-final spot to the first mainline team dangerously close to being booted from the event-and back again-inside a week. Within a day of their victory over Zimbabwe, India were second in their pool behind Australia, managing to bat out 50 overs for the first time in 10 matches. It made a billion people sweat and caused a few dozen to abandon an already slender grasp on rationality by burning posters, vandalising players' homes, filing writ petitions and screaming violent revenge. The prime minister (of India no less, not the BCCI) had to appeal for calm and the team was even shaken enough to reach out to its angry army of fans through the aloof Sachin Tendulkar asking for a show of faith and support.

Ganguly's elder brother Snehasis was quoted in the Bengali paper Ganashakti as saying that even a para player could knock out his famous brother's wicket. "Can a sane person nick such a wide ball?" he asked of the Indian captain's dismissal by Brett Lee in a bylined front-page column.

As Indian cricket made an exhibition of itself on and off the field, Morris Garda, former South African selector and first-class player, standing in his shop in Johannesburg's Asian enclave of Fordsburg, exhaled, "The problem is when you do well for India they name a street after you. When you do badly, they chase you down the same street." Leave those streetlights on, because there's more to come, India's tightrope walk in the tightest World Cup ever is not over yet.

UP IN ARMS: The presence of Akram (above), Younis and Akhtar means Pakistan has the firepower to surprise all and go the distance in South Africa

When Ganguly's men decided to adopt a theme for this Cup (like the Australians did under Steve Waugh), they chose "Now or Never". It is turning out to be something of a prophecy rather than a gung-ho slogan. Making a final push to enter the Super Six, India need the momentum and batting form that carried them through a must-win match against Zimbabwe. A wounded and desperate England lie in wait and then it may even come down to the unthinkable: a shoot-out for a spot in the Super Six against, of all teams, Pakistan on March 1-the mother of all World Cup matches.

The two teams have a good distance to go before they run into one another and pretend it is all "one match at a time". Mention the prospect and players perk up. Already they have fans coming up to them with the old one, "It's okay if you don't win the World Cup. Just don't lose to India/Pakistan." One man sighs, "It's ridiculous you know. If the choice was losing that game and winning the World Cup, everyone knows what we want." It was a blunt admission but the player did ask for his name and nationality not to be mentioned.

It is one of cricket's curiosities that Pakistan have never beaten India in a World Cup match and the Pakistanis think they can change things in South Africa. Aamir Sohail, one of the most successful Pakistanis against India in the Cup, is seriously unimpressed with the Indian batting, saying they have the ability to hit the ball to the boundary but not to rotate the strike. "If they don't score a boundary they throw their wicket away," he says with a small sneer in his voice-much like the one on his face when he tried to wind Venkatesh Prasad up in the 1996 quarter-final in Bangalore and lost his stumps, sending his team on the downslide. "I had to miss one. I was trying to upset Prasad and it didn't work," he says. "It's just another game. That's how you have to treat it. Your job as a batsman is to score runs and the job never changes, no matter who you play."

Not quite, says umpire Steve Bucknor who has stood in more India-Pakistan matches than any umpire would think good for health. "It's not just another game, it's pressure cricket. In that match, I'm more than a decision-maker. I have to be a peacemaker."

The build-up is a bit crazy in the media and among the public and you have to try to stay away from it," says vice-captain Rahul Dravid, "but after the first ball is bowled it becomes a cricket match." But the needle when the two sides take the field is palpable and the chatter pretty much non-stop. Vinod Kambli, who played in two World Cups, says that both sides like to give each other what the Bombayite calls chaavi (the wind-up). If a new batsman plays and misses a few, the slips will thoughtfully scratch their chins and wonder loudly to one another as to what exactly will happen to the poor bugger back home if he should fail and his team should lose. "It's pretty daft stuff sometimes. But the aggro comes from both sides equally." In Paarl during the World Cup, Wasim Akram ran into Kamblibhai and told him he had seen his movie debut before coming out to South Africa.

South Africans of Asian origin, their anticipation growing with the day, are fairly confident that the kind of animosity between British Indians and Pakistanis which made the 1999 Indo-Pak World Cup match at Old Trafford a security hazard is not present in Centurion. There is, however, a large population of "refugees" (a euphemism for illegal immigrants)-close to one lakh in number-which is expected to turn up at the game and provide the needle in the stands. Ismail Docrat, a shop owner in Fordsburg's busy Oriental Plaza, says, "Those guys are dying for tickets. Some of them are barely making ends meet, earning 1,000 rands a month, and are willing to spend 500 rands on a black-market ticket." There's even a joke doing the rounds that the Centurion match will mark the most successful "refugees" sweep by immigration authorities who have only to turn up at the game to catch every illegal immigrant from India and Pakistan in South Africa.

Eighty-five coachloads of spectators from India are coming in specially for that game in Centurion on the outskirts of Tshwane (the city formerly known as Pretoria) where there will be 200 extra security staff on duty to add to the regulation figure of 900. "This is not India," warns one South African. "This is a country where people have permits to carry guns." Shoaib Akhtar is being saved up for a pre-match round of inflammatory statement-making and already Rashid Latif refused to be interviewed by an Indian news channel because he thinks it is anti-Pakistani.

Akram, though, is all smiles, eyes dancing behind his regulation Oakleys, "The Indian batsmen are going to come back, I know it. I know them. I hope they don't decide to come back against us." It is a smooth falsehood because every bowler in the World Cup now fancies his chances against an Indian line-up that spent the first week in the tournament looking like it couldn't fight its way out of a paper box.

The batsmen had crossed 200 only twice in nine matches before Harare, the batting order undergoing as many changes as a starlet in a Bollywood song sequence, but looking none the prettier. Against Australia, it found a new nadir in India's lowest World Cup score ever. "You cannot gloss over this stuff," says coach John Wright who loses weight and gains grey hair with every passing week. "You have to take responsibility. In the early games, we were far too blase or far too ambitious with our shots, and our batting didn't match the conditions or the state of the game."

Gloss be damned, the batting has had the strips torn off it and so have the seven men who were forced into their own mini-meeting after Australia. Captain Ganguly-the drama of his life replete with bad form and the usual Greek chorus calling for his head again-and deputy Rahul Dravid confessed in public to having reached a point of incomprehension with the situation. The gap between preparation and delivery was proving to be too tough to bridge. No Indian team had gone into a World Cup armed with all the competent back-up of this one-professional coach, physio, trainer, analyst and a few sessions with sports psychologist Sandy Gordon.

Yet the batsmen could not shake off the hangover from a poor tour of New Zealand, and a team insider said, "There was zero confidence with the bat and a fear of failure. At a time like that the guys think that the next ball is going to get you out. Zimbabwe picked everyone up." After a fairly successful 2002, India are living dangerously, back to swinging between what one among them describes as "bloody good or bloody bad". In a World Cup that requires solid cricket, it is like strapping on ankle weights and skating on thin ice. But staying alive is half the battle though. As the wise have often remarked, "It doesn't matter how you begin a World Cup, it's how you end it."

India's batting will have to turn up, hamper and all, for the picnic or find itself turned away. Former South African batsman-turned-coach Peter Kirsten enquires, "What's happening to your team, eh?" and then advises in a rush, "Get the feet moving, look to play forward, play close to your body, get through the first 10-15 overs." In this World Cup, the pundits have identified the first hour of each innings as the danger zones for real damage. Not in the accepted subcontinental sense of rocketing away at six-plus runs in the first 15 overs but its more subtle South African variation: for the batsmen, running singles and not losing wickets, and for the bowlers, trying to knock over as many as they can with the new ball. The first hour forms the basis of India's batting plan-wickets in hand, wickets in hand, the batsmen are always told. Failure to execute it now will mean the failure of an entire project. "The heat is on and we need a few leaders to stand up and be counted," says Wright.

Small comfort, but India are not the only team sweating in the heat. Pakistan worry about their batsmen, England about their bowlers, New Zealand about whether boycotting Kenya was a smart move, the West Indies about the rain and Sri Lanka about whether their early blitz will come unstuck as the business end of the pool matches draws close. Only the champion Australians, swatting off scandals and injuries like annoying bush flies, coast coolly, looking like the first side who could go through a modern World Cup undefeated. "We were a bit lucky in 1999," says captain Ricky Ponting. "Now we want to play good cricket in every game and eliminate that luck factor."

South Africa are in a deepest funk of all after losing two of their first three matches, internal rifts now visible. The ghost of the disgraced and departed Hansie Cronje was stirred up to haunt captain Shaun Pollock-by Pollock's own players in the middle of the biggest event in South African cricket history-and the country was left wondering whether its World Cup dream was destined to be or not to be. In comparison, the Indians closed ranks, the new practice of huddling together at the fall of every wicket described by an acerbic Ganguly as a way of "supporting ourselves as no one outside supports us". He didn't elaborate whether he was referring only to the volley of abuse from home or even to Indian selectors who chose not to contact the team management for two weeks even though a few of them were in South Africa, happy it would seem to let the team adrift.

It is now a case of each team for itself. On the streets of South Africa, mean, clean and otherwise, when men are asked "How's it?", the very cool reply is "Shapshap." It's pidgin for "Sharp, brother, sharp"-as in you're ready for anything, ready to cut through all the world has to offer. The World Cup is on a knife-edge. From now on, only the sharpest will thrive, survive and stay alive.

THE WAY TO THE INDIA
INDIA Versus England in Durban could be tricky as the rising water tide in the late afternoon offers movement to seam bowlers. Against Pakistan in Centurion, team psychologist Sandy Gordon says India should stay "task-oriented", focusing only on what they are individually and collectively, and not the occasion. WEAK LINK: Batting form and an unsettled line-up.	AUSTRALIA In line to become the first team to remain unbeaten in the Cup, Australia are left with only England to face at the tail-end of the pool matches. By then, Australia would have rotated players and recharged both their minds and bodies. WEAK LINK: What weak link? Only over-confidence could trip them up.	ENGLAND The job at hand is tough: England need to beat at least two teams out of Pakistan, England and Australia to go through to the Super Six. For that to happen Hussain's temper must die down-and with it the furore over Zimbabwe. Looks a shambles but nothing like a little threat to focus English minds. WEAK LINK: Mental fatigue should things get to a do-or-die stage.
PAKISTAN Pakistan probably have everything they need in the experience of the two Ws and the raw energy and power of Shoaib Akhtar. They are being surprisingly cagey about using Saqlain Mushtaq who they may consider some kind of unlucky omen: in 1997, he was hit for a last-over six by India in Karachi. WEAK LINK: Impulsiveness and a fierce collective temper.	ZIMBABWE With 12 points in hand, they will wait for someone to slip against them in a weak moment-and also to see if they can push England to the brink. WEAK LINK: Lack of depth and overdependence on the what-ifs.	NEW ZEALAND A week of stunning performances meant the Kiwis would have been first into the Super Six. With the forfeiture of the Kenya match they can finish their pool matches with 16 points. If they go into a tie with Sri Lanka on points, the latter will progress into the second round as they had beaten New Zealand earlier. WEAK LINK: The decision to avoid Kenya could cost them.
S. AFRICA South Africa have to beat Sri Lanka to even have a chance to contend for a place in the Super Six. Their performance under pressure is legendarily poor and the Lankans know that their resolve is about to be tested. Could find a very powerful second wind if they do pull through. WEAK LINK: Pollock's temperament.	SRI LANKA Sri Lanka have done the bare minimum by putting themselves in line to receive at least 16 points from their pool games and remain in the running for a Super Six berth. All they need to do is beat Kenya and the West Indies and leave South Africa with all the running in their final pool match on March 3. WEAK LINK: Like India, a side of many mood swings.	WEST INDIES Received the short end of the stick when they had to split points against Bangladesh, so their match against Sri Lanka must be won. The net run-rate needs to be beefed up against Kenya and Canada to see them through. WEAK LINK: Inexperienced bowling under pressure and overdependence on Brian Lara.