During the team meeting before their match against India, the Australians set about identifying the danger men in the opposition. They identified seven Indians. Ten days later, England ran into an eighth-in the unlikely form of Ashish Nehra, a big-toothed, loose as a goose chatterbox nicknamed Popat.

SENDING A MESSAGE: Nehra won India a famous victory and helped silence the studio critics

Nehra, 23, bounding in on a swollen ankle, had worked himself into a high state of excitement with his destruction of England. It ended with him throwing up in full colour on a giant screen at Kingsmead in front of a heaving crowd of 25,000, who, like Nehra, were hardly able to believe the form he found himself in. India's seamers-Javagal Srinath, Zaheer Khan and Nehra-have been the unsung heroes of the Indian team and have created something out of nothing. The new ball is central to the result of every game in this World Cup and the better India is served in this department, the further they will progress.

The victory in Durban, the liveliest wicket in the Republic, signalled that India's Cup campaign has burst into life and confidence again. The batsmen are finally putting bat to ball with some composure, the bowlers hitting 140 kmph as a matter of routine, the route out of a tight group has been sighted and the Super Six is within reach.

But pointedly and not so quietly, the critic has also been silenced, a slight has been answered, and a not-so-subtle message is going out to the massed ranks of expert commentators who shredded the Indians after the defeat to Australia which, the cricketers believe, set the tone for the public hysteria in India. Every time India takes the field in this Cup, they let it be known there are two contests on-the team versus its opposition and the team versus TV commentators.

ARMCHAIR BARBS: Gavaskar and Sidhu (above) are among the TV critics who have angered Ganguly (below) and his team

After the England victory, Sourav Ganguly was asked whether he had any message for the critics who had questioned the team's commitment. Never the most restrained of men, he shot back, "Which one-which one of them do you want a message for?" before going on, "Honestly, some of them are becoming a joke; they say whatever they feel like and sometimes what they say is immature." He also dismissed them as "too ordinary" to comment on, but in private the Indians, from the oldest to the youngest, have been riled into retaliating in one voice after Australia.

Srinath said that comments made on TV during the Australia match "could have incited our more emotional fans" into attacking players' homes. He then added a provocative rider, "Some of the producers and commentators have sons who want to play for India; I'm sure they don't want their families to go through so much pressure."

The TV channels under unofficial fire are match broadcasters Sony and its main rival espnStar, who are doing pre- and post-game shows with a high-profile panel of experts at Dolphin Beach near Cape Town. Staff at both channels didn't waste any time in pointing fingers at one another for being at the root of the Indian team's temper tantrum.

The man from Sony will say Srinath was referring to Sunil Gavaskar, it's his son Rohan who is on the fringe of national selection. The man from espnStar counters that the reference was to Krishnamachari Srikkanth, whose son plays junior cricket in Tamil Nadu. In this World Cup, the "circuit"-as people refer to the band of players, media men, commentators and production crew who travel the world together-has been broken. It is much like an unsettled tribe of hunters and gatherers; the cricketers hunt runs, wickets and other things, the rest gathering scraps of information and passing it on to them and back out again. Messages from the outside reach only via a bush telegraph of rumour, supposition and perception; by the time they reach the Indians from the original source, they could have changed shape entirely.

Akram's 500 wickets in ODIs is a feat of enormous proportions to go with the 400-plus Test wickets he has also got.

Ganguly was told that Srikkanth had said on air that the Indian captain should drop himself to No. 14 in the batting order. That Gavaskar had said the Indians had let Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi down with their performance against Australia. ("Manohar Joshi-now how is that important?"). That he had also said that when the players should have been gathering their thoughts before the World Cup, they had taken on too many commercial commitments. That Navjot Singh Sidhu had said makeshift wicketkeeper Rahul Dravid was allergic to leather. That they played not for India, only for money.

The players are not convinced that any of this has been twisted too far out of context. "We have the Internet," says one indignantly. "We know what they say about us. We know what kind of cricketers some of them were in their playing days."

It is an unsavoury bout of mud-slinging that leaves outsiders dazed and confused. An English mediaman asks, "Why is everything so personal?" Sidhu responds with a Sidhuism: " They are supposed to perform, I am supposed to say it like I see it. Don't I jump out of my chair when they play well?" Gavaskar declined to get dragged into the debate as did Srikkanth.

Says Harish Thawani, co-chairman, World Sport Nimbus, which is in charge of the World Cup production for Sony: "A commentator is like a columnist. What he says is not subscribed to or endorsed by a production house." Also known as, hey, don't shoot us, we are only the messengers.

When the messengers got the message that the Indian team were annoyed, damage control begun in a jiffy: commentators and presenters on the Sony team, including Robin Singh, Srikkanth and Mandira Bedi among others, received ticking-offs and, sources say, were asked to tone their comments down. Bedi had to stay off air before being sent back on. An Indian player says, "We don't mind being criticised for cricketing errors, but sometimes the TV guys go too far. Our silence is mistaken as our weakness, as agreeing with what has been said. It has happened before but when our families started getting affected, then it was time to say something."

Players believe the rivalry between the commentators-each looking to make his own mark, find his niche and strengthen his "brand"-sparks off over-the-top critiques. The TV folk say it is advertisements between overs that show grinning cricketers hawking products that sets things off; usually, the advert marks their dismissal from the pitch playing a rash stroke in a crisis situation. "Our statements could have been a trigger," admits one TV commentator, "but only after a combination of many things. The advertisements between overs definitely being a factor when the team performs poorly."

After the Srinath statement, India media manager Amrit Mathur was besieged by reporters, asking whether the team wanted the television reporters on the road to apologise on behalf of their producers or whether the team wanted a platform to make a statement. Mathur declined both offers. It is a suitable tactic when the going is good simply because it works equally well when things go bad.

Now that the going is good, the cricketers can stamp their feet and call the shots; but the knives are out. The next time Ganguly's team stumbles, the men behind the mikes will be ready, tools and tongues sharpened. The saga of India's dramatic World Cup has just added on a new sub-plot.