A nation turns its loving eyes to Sachin

There is a notice at Delhi international airport that says much about India's national sport. It names the items banned as hand baggage in this fretful post-9/11 world. Guns, knives and scissors are all outlawed, as you would expect. So are cricket balls.

Not many countries can have convinced themselves that there are travellers with such speed of arm and eye that they can subdue an aircrew and hijack a plane full of passengers armed only with the new ball.

But Indians think and fantasise about cricket from the cradle to the grave, from the lowest rung of their huge society to the loftiest. And the approach of the World Cup has turned this deep and constant devotion into outright religious fervour. For days, there have been "Countdown to the Cup" articles in the papers exploring every detail of the contest, from the bounciness of the pitches to the right batting order.

The nation's ardour has not been dampened by a long-running dispute over World Cup contracts between India and the International Cricket Council concerning players' individual sponsorship rights – which at one stage could have led to the exclusion of the team.

India's popular Star News TV channel has been gathering email advice from the public on tactics, to be delivered to the team. Television advertising rates are the highest ever seen in India. Extra flights to the tournament have been chartered, and easily filled. A World Cup album of rousing Hindi cricketing songs has been released; the markets have stocked up with World Cup merchandise – T-shirts, books, cassettes, key-rings, CD-ROMs.

As one newspaper blithely remarked: "You can watch your stars perform while wearing the blue India cap and jersey and noting down every match-stat in the official notebook with an official pen." In a nation where it is impossible to make a wally of yourself by being over-enthusiastic about the national passion, plenty of people will doubtless do so.

The Indian underworld has been preparing to rake in rupees by the truckload. Illegal gambling on matches is big business; some observers predict a turnover of up to £25m per match. Huge bets – sometimes on the outcome of individual deliveries – will pour in to the Bombay bookies, who closet themselves away in hotel rooms, armed with mobile phones using pre-paid Sim cards which they constantly change in order to stay ahead of the police.

So much for the nation, but the players themselves are entering the World Cup with some trepidation. They were shaken by their dismal performances during the tour of New Zealand, where their batsmen were destroyed by fine seam bowling (admittedly, on fierce green pitches) and excellent fielding.

India only won two out of seven one-day matches, and nearly threw away one of those (the sixth, in Auckland) with a collapse of such suicidal folly that it raised serious questions here about the team's mental strength. There was debate, too, about whether Sourav Ganguly had lost his way as captain.

The nation has been particularly fretting over its cricketing deity, Sachin Tendulkar. By his stunningstandards – he is the world's leading scorer in limited-over cricket – he has been going though a rough patch. He missed 11 successive one-dayers against West Indies and New Zealand because of a pulled hamstring and a twisted ankle and has yet fully to recover form.

There has been a huge fuss over whether he should be restored to opener, where he made 30 of his 33 centuries in one-day internationals. His position at No 4 has been denounced as a "fiasco... which makes a great player look ordinary", by India's acid-tongued cricketer-turned-commentator Navjot Singh Sidhu. One glance at Tendulkar's World Cup record – an average of 58, three centuries and six 50s in 22 games – confirms what everyone already knows: he is crucial to India's chances.

There has been some hand-wringing, too, about the decision to put Rahul Dravid – a brilliant batsman but, as Singh Sidhu has observed, an "uncomfortable" keeper – behind the stumps and not the teenage wonder, Parthiv Patel.

At heart, the country knows the team it worships stands only an outside chance. Their pool is tough, and includes Australia, Pakistan and England. Their bowling is not what it might be.

Yet this has not deterred this infinitely optimistic nation from looking wistfully back to the home series of 2001, when it stunned the world by beating the Aussies, or from daring to fantasise. The statistics tell the story: according to a Hindustan Times internet poll, 59 per cent of Indians are fully expecting victory.