Amitabh Bachchan donned the hat of a cricket commentator during the World Cup match between India and Pakistan at Adelaide, Australia. This was part of integration between TV channel Star Sports and the producers of Big B's recent film Shamitabh. Amitabh played a voice artist in R Balki's Shamitabh that also starred Dhanush and Akshara Haasan in pivotal roles. The 72-year-old actor was in the

Cricket's showpiece event is set to kick off next week but it's as much about business as it is about the romance of the game. Sunday Times looks at everything that's different about this World Cup. The first cricket World Cup in 1975 was not even called the World Cup. With only 15 games and a new one-day format that everyone still saw as a "necessary evil" that followed Test matches, insurance-giant Prudential insisted as tournament sponsor that it be called the Prudential Cup.

On the silver trophy that Clive Lloyd eventually held aloft and even in the game's bible, Wisden. Yet, charting the early history of the World Cup, cricket writer and historian Gideon Haigh argues the idea was a huge success because "like the best innovations, cricket's World Cup met a need nobody had foreseen." It fulfilled the eternal need of sports fans to dramatically square off their