BOMBAY, 31 January 2003 — The Indian players’ moan that they are being asked to play too much cricket is actually an unadmitted lament that they are better off financially playing less and modeling more.

Ever since the cricketers returned home after a disastrous tour of New Zealand, almost all the players, the marquee names even more so, have been engaged in hectic acts of fulfilling endorsement and modeling contracts. Since some of these campaigns involve the entire World Cup-bound team, even a lesser name in the squad is kept busy.

The four most in demand have been Sachin Tendulkar, Virendra Sehwag, Saurav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid. But quietly catching them has been young Yuvraj Singh, who experts in the advertisement world seem to think makes an excellent model.

While Tendulkar had no less than nine contracts to fulfill and was working almost round the clock until the date of the team’s departure for South Africa, Sehwag had seven. Being a newcomer, however, Sehwag had a lot of work to put in and since his assignments were widespread, he had to hop from Bombay to Bangalore to Calcutta. Can you believe that one of the campaigns was even shot in a plane, when he was making a long haul from Bangalore to Calcutta?

So the two weeks’ break that the Indian players had between the end of the New Zealand tour and their departure for South Africa was spent in commercial assignments. Hardly anyone took either the ball or the bat in hand. They were given a stiff routine of exercises to carry out every day at a gymnasium. Whether the players have been honest enough to observe this regimen, time on the fields in South Africa alone will tell.

However poor the latest performance and whatever the composition of the Indian team, the euphoria for the game in the country just never dies. Almost every corporate body worth its name has jumped on the World Cup bandwagon, associating itself in any possible way with the Indian team, as a whole, as well as individual players.

The frenzy of the people’s involvement is seen in such crazy things as recording self-written best wishes for the Indian team on a mile long cloth banner, which has been prepared by joining together four separate pieces which have done the rounds of the four metropolises in specially-decked trucks.

As if this was not enough, other forms of getting the people to convey their messages to the Indian team were worked out through television and Internet.

Fabulous gifts have been on the offer on quiz programs and it looks like almost half the World Cup tickets have made their way to India. Sales everywhere have a special gift of a World Cup ticket.

As the date of the team’s departure drew closer, quite a few functions were held to bid the Indian squad bon voyage and sure success in the World Cup. One of the functions, where awards to international and Indian players were given away, continued until the time of the team’s departure late on Tuesday night.

If skipper Ganguly sounded terribly repetitive during his many speeches, he could not be blamed. After all what more could he say than to ask everyone to forget the last New Zealand tour and look ahead to better days. Just as it happens every time that the Indian team goes to the World Cup, high hopes were pinned on the side once again.

The refrain “we will bring the cup with us” has by now become jaded. Last time out when the World Cup was held in England, the carriage of hope was as big. In the end there was nothing but disappointment for all.

Getting involved is one thing but carrying this support to an unrealistic point will always be fraught with disappointment and not a little frustration. Only the very level-headed keep on asking the question whether the Indian team is really well prepared, mentally and physically, to meet the huge challenge?

India has been drawn in the stronger pool where the top four teams of the world at the moment are clubbed together. They are Australia, Pakistan, India and England with Zimbabwe, a dark horse which could upset the apple-cart of the biggest ones. So, from these five, only three will make the super six. The battle indeed is going to be engrossing, with the climax being the India-Pakistan clash. Everything in both these countries is bound to come to a standstill on that first day of March.