Never has such a fuss been made about so little. Anyone who saw the India-New Zealand match could not help but watch in fascination the peekaboo on screen. Beginning Extraaa Innings on SETMax with a blouse that displayed an acreage of cleavage-which a diaphanous sari did nothing to hide-by lunchtime, Mandira Bedi's pallu was demurely pleated over the offending expanse.

Love her or hate her, no one could ignore her

She didn't want Mummy to call in horror. "When I left my hotel room, I looked perfectly all right. Under the studio lights, my blouse looked completely different. I decided to cover up before my mum called." Mummy is also the reason why Mandira stopped wearing spaghetti-sorry, noodle-straps. When you call Mummy, the well-spoken Gita Bedi says: "She's often worn such clothes to weddings in Mumbai but people in the North are much more conservative."

What happened to make Mandira's clothes a pan-Indian obsession, so much so that you could actually place bets on what she'd wear next? What turned the 31-year-old almost has-been into a television sensation? She became the butt of SMS jokes, the subject of a Mandirameter (it rated her clothes) in a Mumbai tabloid and the creator of a hot new term in the fashion lexicon: noodle straps. She was, in short, everything that SETMax hoped she would be.

When the channel picked Mandira, it knew she had the Shanti equity. Strong woman fighting injustice-already part of family viewing, thanks to a three-year run on Doordarshan (1994-96) and repeats on other networks-would make a smooth transition to being the Voice of the Indian Woman during the World Cup. Only, somewhere along the way, the girl next door became a sex symbol, Mandira became Madonna-a Madonna who listened to her mama preaching.

This is not her first transformation. Actor Shah Rukh Khan, who had to reject her stuttering advances in 1995's Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (a role she got because she went to Mumbai's St Xavier's College at the same time as the film's director Aditya Chopra) remembers her as being very "sweet and nervous. But then I was shocked to see her in Shanti looking so tough and strong". He recalls that she taught him a tangential thought game that he still remembers.

Extraaa charming

On the SETMax commentary team, while she's not exactly just a prop, she doesn't appear threateningly intelligent either-even Mandira admits she "holds back a little". Adman Prahlad Kakkar, with whom Mandira worked for six months when she was a trainee at Genesis, says she is "very bright". But, he says, "She hides it very well on screen. She has to, otherwise it would emasculate the men." Stuck in a boy's club, she is vulnerable, fairly knowledgeable, affectionate, bubbly and charming. "When she flubs, she apologises immediately," says Kakkar. "Everyone finds it endearing.'' Equally appealing is her gung-ho patriotism, which may explain why Pakistan shows no interest in picking up the Extraaa Innings segment from SETMax.

According to her husband, ad filmmaker Raj Kaushal, Mandira is just being herself. She agrees: "How I dress on screen is exactly how I dress off it. I can't understand the hullabaloo. It's just that till now I've had a very safe image which Shanti created." According to the highly protective SETMax team, her appeal is that of the ideal Indian woman, who is a blend of East and West (she can wear a Ritu Kumar sari as well as a Mango outfit) and can be "sister, mother, wife, and friend". Her brief: just be yourself. Even if it means shuffling tricolour bangles and wearing embellished dog collars.

So she can clutch fellow commentator Charu Sharma by the hand, call the redoubtable Tony Greig "Greggy", be the only person in the studio to stand up while the national anthem is being sung on the field and tell a shocked Roshan Mahanama on the day India defeated Sri Lanka, "You can run but you can't hide." All this and a no-blouse too. Her direct competitor for the everyman appeal quotient, Navjot Singh Sidhu, may have to think of another profession soon.

Now that she's a reborn star, Mandira has already got two film offers as a lead heroine ("Being described as eye candy and sexy is a new experience for me," she says. "I was supposed to be the Bharatiya nari."). She's acting in a new Sony serial, Force I, where she kicks butt as a black leather-clad crime fighter. She is Mihir's second wife tucked away in Australia in the hugely popular Star Plus soap, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. And she's a true blue superstar in Sri Lanka where she endorses Vogue jewellery and Pantene and where she recently boosted the ratings of a Sinhala soap called Damini with a four-episode guest appearance.

It is a second chance at fame she did not expect. "I felt I was stagnating. Being the first Hindi daily soap on TV, Shanti was a pathfinder-it was so difficult to live up to it," says Mandira. A proud Kaushal says the world is now recognising her potential. "She will eventually direct," says Kaushal, who helmed Dino Morea's debut film Pyaar Mein Kabhi Kabhi. Mandira certainly has the credentials for it: after a BA in economics from St Xavier's College, she did a postgraduate diploma in social communication from Sophia Polytechnic in Mumbai.

Like her, Kaushal has a cricket connection: he directed the Hero Honda ad with Sourav Ganguly and Hrithik Roshan as well as the Saif Ali Khan and Mohammed Kaif chips ad. Theirs is a Hindi film story: Kaushal met Mandira seven years ago, played caddy to Daddy (a former senior executive with ICI Berger Paints who now tees off at the Delhi Golf Club six days a week) for three years before the conservative Sikh family gave its approval. They now live in a suburban home in Mumbai called RaMa (Ra for Raj and Ma for Mandira).

No doubt once the couple returns from South Africa, we will be drowned in a sea of many more such diabetes-inducing details. Brace yourself.