For a fortnight now, India has stood still. Held its breath, said its prayers, not moved off its chairs and charpais for fear of upsetting some cosmic order. An outer life is lived in a detached virtual reality where offices are attended, bills paid, food cooked, kids scolded, homework done. Mostly though it's an inner life where dreams are dreamt. A nation waits in hope and fear, anticipation and trepidation. For a fortnight now, another India has been on the move. Swift, decisive and bold, winning in Johannesburg and Durban, Cape Town and Harare, giving greater definition and surer shape to that curious, collective yearning of a billion people.

The state of the nation, fortunately, is not the state of the team. To those in it, the World Cup is not only a dream: it is a long campaign, a regular accounting of strengths and weaknesses, a business plan with roles, goals and targets. As temperatures rise and the chattering gets more emotional and argumentative back home, India's cricket team runs on the most mundane timetables: travel, hotel, breakfast, nets, gym, team talks, dinner and a little loafing around the malls in civvies, looking like frighteningly ordinary Joes with flashy cell phones but no ostensible special talents. Every few days, the captain turns up and talks about "one match at a time" and the coach about "keeping the feet on the ground" until reporters are ready to fling recorders at their heads.

Make no mistake, they all see it in the distance. Glimmering seductively in the heat haze of a South African summer-cricket's most valued trophy and the days that could change their lives forever. The cricketers hang on to the boring brass tacks because not only are they what has taken this team this far, they are also one of the few things that are for real in their otherwise unreal universe.

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It would seem that even the fates are tilting the Indian way; in the semi-final they will face Kenya, under lights in Durban. It's a venue where losing the toss is usually a death sentence but it need not be so against the babes of the event, because the Indians have already taken care of a similar bogey on their way into the final four: in their first Super Six match-also vs Kenya in Cape Town, where teams batting first win the match seven times out of 10-the Indians chased successfully and bucked the odds.

The Indians would probably send chocolate hampers to TV commentators before treating it as such but their semi-final may now seem a foregone conclusion.

The tussle for the World Cup could come down to the day the Indians play the only team that has comprehensively beaten them in the tournament. It's the only team unbeaten in the tournament, enduring Cup favourites, the least favourite of all teams here in South Africa but still the undisputed and undefeated world champions, Australia.

It's the final everyone wants to see and the upset result the Indians are being willed to create because of a hundred illogical arguments: the Aussies are too arrogant, look at them-during a publicity stunt bowling at English journalists, they tried to hit every man, not just make them look silly. The favourites have never won the World Cup. One-day cricket is supposed to be a fickle game, such sustained dominance cannot be permitted. Somebody, stop them.

Jimmy Adams, former West Indian batsman, chuckles, "There's still a lot of cricket to be played in this World Cup. Remember what happened in 1983. Everyone thought the West Indies were invincible." As if India can ever forget. Last-minute shocks notwithstanding, India vs Australia would pit a smoothly functioning set of quick bowlers against a group of compulsively aggressive batsmen. Ricky Ponting's pack of yellow peril has men answering to both descriptions but probably for the first time in cricket history, so does India.

Sourav Ganguly believes he has the best pace attack ever available to an Indian captain; it took the team into the semi-finals with a performance of stinging and prolonged hostility against Sri Lanka which should have busted a few cliches about killer-instinct, vegetarianism and the nice Indian cricketer.

Former South African coach Graham Ford told India Today, "Srinath is experienced but it's the development of the other two that has given India a very good chance. When India last toured here in 2001, we almost used to target Zaheer and Nehra. Now they have been turned into weapons."

The two lefties Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra have fiercely independent spirits but defer to the "old statesman" of the side. Srinath's absence for long periods from the Test team last year appears to have made them stronger. "We were worried they had drifted a little after good starts," says vice-captain Rahul Dravid, "but they have come on well, they have a great desire to learn."

One member of the team party says that the progress of Khan and Nehra has also given Srinath "the freedom to express himself", even though he still looks like he carries the weight of the planet on his bony shoulders. The bowlers plan independently before every game, using all the help they can get from collective experience and specialist advice (see "Secret Weapon") and roles are clearly defined. Nehra knows that as first change his job is to hare in, hit the deck and announce to the batsmen that one opening bowler may have signed off but the interrogation was still on.

The rate at which India have managed to get early wickets between their three strike bowlers has ensured that teams don't run away with a good first 15 overs. En route to the semi-finals, only two teams totalled more than 200 against India when batting first: Pakistan and Kenya. Barring the defeat to Australia, where the Indians set them only 126 to win, the Indian bowling has not allowed any other opposition to score more than 175.

The shakiness of the Australian top order should interest the Indian bowlers and this does not include Harbhajan Singh who is always an interested party in that department: in World Cup matches against Pakistan, England and New Zealand, the Aussies have lost four wickets before scoring 90 runs, not a sign of composure among the better batsmen. They eventually won all those games but 1987 Aussie World Cup winner Dean Jones told India Today, "If India had Australia at 70-8 (like New Zealand did), they would have finished them off. But India must dare to be different, drop Dinesh Mongia and play two spinners." Sanjay Manjrekar has had a friendly bet with Jones that India would beat Australia in one match in the World Cup. It's not too difficult to imagine which match that could now possibly be.

India's bowling backed up by sharpness in the field has sent eyebrows rocketing in South Africa but the source of the team's strength, its pride, beauty and confidence lies elsewhere. "We need a big week from our batters," coach John Wright told India Today. "We want to play the next week as well as we've played the last two." On television, it is the adrenaline rush of glorious strokeplay, but in the change room the batting plan is ruled by the mantra of "wickets in hand" and built on the foundation of simple mathematics: if any of the main batsmen lasts 100 balls, they could well have scores in excess of 80 runs. It is the ability to "last" against the battering ram of the Australian bowling which will once again be tested. It didn't work in Centurion but the first task is still to see off new ball bowlers Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee (see box) and get to over No. 18 with as little damage as possible because that's the point at which the ball begins to get older, softer and more hittable. But the way to do that, the way ahead, is always forward. "You can't wear anyone down in one-day cricket," says former Glamorgan cricketer-turned-commentator Rodney Ontong. "You have to attack, your younger players learn more by attacking."

In a World Cup, attack doesn't involve the suicidal charge of the light brigade, but a guerrilla operation instead-planned clinically, executed ruthlessly. The Aussies usually do the damage upfront with the new ball and let the pressure tie the batting side up in knots. Should the Indian top order plant that shoe on the Australian foot then the results could be dramatically different.

It is well known that if their plans don't work first up, Australia's main bowlers respond not with skill, as they do when things are going swimmingly, but with emotion. The tell-tale signs of an Australian bowler wavering from his line of duty are lines of exasperation and anger on his face. Says Sri Lankan Kumar Sangakkara, wicketkeeper of the only team that had beaten the Aussies before their world-record run: "All it needs is 45 minutes of pressure to turn a match around against Australia. Pressure gets to them like anyone else." Forty-five minutes. Eighteen overs. It's a numbers game after all and the Indians will be led in it by the one man whose numbers are best against the best team in the world.

The romantics dream of a double: a football World Cup for Ronaldo, so surely why not a cricket World Cup for a cricketer so luminous and influential as Sachin Tendulkar after three disappointments? With his murderous form, no one dares ask him whether he will be around for 2007. Besides, the prospect is too awful to contemplate. His colleagues believe he is in The Zone and the experts fall over themselves to discuss the importance of Mr T. Former New Zealand captain Martin Crowe told India Today he believed that Tendulkar had "done all the hard work and led Virender Sehwag and Ganguly into proper form". Former Australian spinner Ashley Mallett told India Today that in the final, the spectre of Tendulkar would loom large in Aussie consciousness, "The more they win, the closer Australia come to a loss. They would be thinking that Sachin is due to fail but know that they are due to lose a match too." Jones has another theory: bowl Tendulkar to the Australians, he has taken more one-day wickets against them (18) than against any other team. "They fear him, they don't like to play him, they are in awe of him."

If Tendulkar can haunt the Australians, why can the Australians not possibly haunt India in return, specially when given the memory of their pummelling in the pool match? Ontong says, "Teams get overawed by the Aussies, so you have to break the psychological hold they have over their opponents." India's turnaround in three weeks from Centurion versus Australia to Johannesburg versus Sri Lanka could be a start. Wright cautions, "Our toughest games are to come but the belief is back."

It's the prospect of being given one more chance to compete with the Australians on equal terms for the minor matter of the title of world champions that will lift the Indians should the occasion arise. "At the moment Australia have found a solution to every question that has been asked of them," says Dravid. "All the other teams function on the principle that one-day cricket is about just one day. What you have to do is keep posing enough questions to them on that one day and hope that it's the one day they don't come up with all the answers."

World Cups are won by several means, inspirational innings, dynamism in the field, slices of luck, the courage in the hearts of men, meticulous planning. Sometimes it takes a little of each, sometimes a help of single element, but nothing worth winning is won if it is not backed by the brazen greed of ambition.

The Indian team is a collective of men who among them have all those qualities and have done the hard yards to deserve a little luck. They have planned well and taken responsibility, the Cup being part of team meetings for almost a year now. The team has a group of leaders for every aspect of the game-Dravid and Tendulkar run the batting meetings, Kumble and Srinath the bowling, and Kaif and Yuvraj the fielding. There is a sense of common purpose and the most unlikely men stand up in team meetings and demand more from their mates: after Australia, it was the shadow man Sanjay Bangar who reminded the batsmen of what they needed to do to make this work; after the first Super Six match Yuvraj, notes in hand, stood up and declared the fielding against Kenya had been an utter disgrace for a team that wanted to win the Cup. The intent is visible but is there enough of the pure unashamed ambition?

Many Sundays ago, while walking out to the toss on the morning of India's match against Namibia, ICC Match Referee Wasim Raja looked across to Sourav Ganguly and said, "So Sourav, fancy getting a gold coin today, eh?" A rumour had gone around in the early days of the Cup that the winning team would get to keep the specially-minted coin-made of solid gold, weighing one ounce-used at the toss. Ganguly turned to Raja and smiled at the mention of such trifling prizes.

"I've come here," he said, "for bigger things."