Sachin Tendulkar is on the verge of making history - more history that is. The Indian batsman is tantalizingly close to scoring his 100th century in international cricket.

Tendulkar is already head and shoulders above his rivals when it comes to scoring centuries. His nearest challenger, Australia’s Ricky Ponting, is some distance behind with a "mere" 69 tons to his name.

The Mumbai-born legend is playing at Lord's - the home of cricket - in the 100th Test match between his native India and hosts England. It is also the 2,000th Test match of all time.

The stage could not be better set for the “Little Master” to reach another milestone in his glittering career.

Batsmen have scored 100 centuries in the past - but not at international level. It’s difficult to put Tendulkar’s feat into words, this really is something special.

But is he the best batsman to walk the planet? Put simply, yes he is.

Australian Don Bradman is often talked about as the top dog –- he had an incredible international average of almost 100 –- but in most people’s eyes Tendulkar is on another level, despite a more modest average of 49.71 runs.

Talking of averages, the West Indies’ Andy Ganteaume tops the list at 112. But this was his only innings!

Next up is Bradman, who amassed 6,996 runs during a Test career which ended well before the advent of limited-overs cricket and the introduction to the five-day game of minor nations such as Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. Needing just four runs in his final Test innings in 1948 to achieve an average of 100, he was out before troubling the scorers - leaving him on 99.94 from his 52 matches.

By comparison, Tendulkar is playing in his 633rd international in the various formats of the modern game - more than any other cricketer. And to date he has scored an incredible 32,813 runs.

His nearest challenger, again, is Ponting, almost 7,000 runs behind.

It all started for Tendulkar in 1989 with a crunch match against Pakistan, when as a 16-year-old he made just 15 before being skittled by Waqar Younis. Since then he has gone from strength to strength.

And it’s not just limited to the sub-continent where the speed and action of the ball is affected by the humidity – an advantage for home players.

Tendulkar averages 51 on home soil, as well as in Sri Lanka, but in the pressure-cooker matches against bitter rivals Pakistan it falls slightly, to 39.

His West Indies average is 47, in South Africa it’s 41 and in Australia, 46.

But his best average? That's 52. In England - where he’s hoping to rewrite the record books.

His only immediate problem though is his notoriously poor form at Lord's. His top score at the home of cricket is a meager 37, with an average of 21.

But even if he doesn’t achieve the landmark 100th ton this match, it’s only a question of time before he does.

Every major tournament has its memorable moment, an occasion when the plucky underdog pulls off an unexpected victory against a giant of the game. It is all part of the unforgettable drama that only an international sporting event can produce.

The football game that goes into extra time and penalties, the fifth set in a gladiatorial tennis encounter, or the cricket match that comes down to the last ball.

It’s what makes sport unpredictable, exciting and addictive.

Unfortunately it seems that is not a view shared by cricket’s governing body, the International Cricket Council.

It is under the impression that it would be much more fun to ban the minnows, making sure the chance of any genuine sporting drama is reduced to a bare minimum.

The ICC has decided to reduce the number of teams at the next World Cup to just 10 - the member nations, who compete in international Tests.

This is both an insult to the countries that will be shut out, and a move that will set the game’s development back for years.

Can you imagine FIFA adopting a similar approach? Even the men who want to stage football’s World Cup in a desert are not foolish enough to reduce the number of matches, and therefore revenue, exposure and marketing opportunities from their prized tournament.

One of the nations being unceremoniously dumped from the competition is Ireland, a team which produced such wonderful performances in India last month, including a victory over England off the back of a fine century by Kevin O’Brien.

To add insult to injury, Ireland’s successful tournament means they are now actually ranked higher in the one-day game than member nation Zimbabwe - another statistic which is clearly irrelevant to the wise men of the ICC.

The Irish authorities have used every adjective imaginable to describe their anger and frustration about the team’s exclusion from the next competition. They say it will seriously damage the development of the game.

And that is the biggest crime.

The ICC has managed to turn the post-tournament euphoria into anger and recrimination. It is, in both PR and sporting terms, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. At a time when those who run cricket should be seeking to capitalize on a wave of fresh interest in the sport, they have instead done their level best to ensure the game will suffer in the ‘smaller’ cricketing countries.

This negative move will hit the game harder with every passing year as fickle fans hungry for success will turn to other sports, run by organizations with smarter and more coherent strategies to engage international sports enthusiasts.

India’s island city of Mumbai is all about noise: a constant car-honking stream of vehicles and people. It was silenced for eight hours Saturday as the 2011 Cricket World Cup final was played, but then burst back into life to signal India’s victory. Colorful explosions lit up the skyline as an astonishing number of fireworks were let off, continuing for an hour after the match.

Even after the fireworks had run out, ear-splitting firecrackers kept punctuating the gap between vehicles beeping and drums beating. We went out on to the streets to film near our hotel in Worli, south Mumbai. We saw mopeds buzzing around, mainly ridden by young men, bare-chested and faces painted, with the pillion passenger waving an India flag.

Whole communities that had gathered to watch the game together spilled out of their apartment blocks to celebrate. Some had created posters of the players and were dancing and drinking in front of them, taking photos there because they knew they couldn’t get near the real team in the Wankhede Stadium across town.

At the sight of our camera, the crowd went berserk, clearly desperate to show the world what this victory meant to them. We were mobbed and groped and had to move on.

A 10-minute drive away, we spoke to an equally happy, but more sedate, group from the Sahkar Niwas apartment block in Tardeo. They were jumping for joy by the roadside after watching India’s triumph on a big screen on the roof of their building.

There were more flags and many had marked their foreheads and cheeks with traditional smudges of purple. They ensured my face got painted too.

This is my first visit to India, and although I have heard the phrase “cricket is a religion” many times, you can only truly believe it when you hear the people here tell you. We have spoken to plenty of amateur cricketers playing in Mumbai’s parks this week: they look you in the eye and tell you that star batsman – and local resident - Sachin Tendulkar is God with complete conviction.

The sport unites this nation of more than a billion people. Many of them couldn’t even explain the leg-before-wicket rule, but for India cricket is an expression of national pride.

One resident, partying in the street, said to me that he hoped the world would now realize that India is a future superpower. Others agreed with my suggestion that this sporting success was significant enough to be Mumbai’s first decent morale boost since the dispiriting terror attacks here in November 2008, which left more than 160 people dead and hundreds more wounded.

Perhaps it’s is why one of the more unlikely headlines in the newspapers the next morning said simply: “Thank You” – the Sunday Mumbai Mirror reflecting the appreciation of an entire country.

It’s thanks to India’s captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni – or Midas Singh Dhoni as he’s been nicknamed, because everything he touches turns to gold. Yesterday it was for a match-winning innings and a huge Bollywood-style ending when his big six clinched victory.

It was thanks also to Tendulkar for finally adding a World Cup winner’s medal to his long list of batting records.

And thanks to the entire team for living up to their potential, coping with the pressure and winning cricket’s biggest prize on home soil.

Sometimes a sporting event is more than just a game. Sometimes the arena for competition is emblematic and symbolic of a greater reality, in which the twists and turns of a match carry a wider significance.

And so it was for the titanic clash between India and Pakistan in the semifinal of the cricket World Cup; a tie that needed no artificially created hype. Giants of the sport going head-to-head for a place in the final as two nations, both equally obsessed with the game, saw millions become engrossed with the drama unfolding on a circle of grass in Mohali.

And the celebratory spirit of the event was remarkable given the backdrop of recent relations between to the two Asian rivals. The uneasy neighbors have fought three wars since the blood-soaked partition of the subcontinent in 1947, and recent peace talks were shattered in November 2008 when ten gunmen attacked Mumbai, killing 164 people and wounding hundreds more.

India blamed Pakistan for harboring terrorists as political relationships disintegrated. And all seemed bleak until a game of cricket intervened.

Earlier this week India's prime minister used the semifinal showdown as a vehicle for diplomacy, inviting his Pakistani counterpart to watch the first match between the countries since "26/11" – which is how Indians refer to that deadly day.

Seemingly only cricket, often referred to as a "religion" or being "like God" in the parts of Mumbai I have visited, was enough to focus collective minds on what unites rather than divides.

And if cricket is a religion, it is easy to identify its gods. Local hero Sachin Tendulkar cleared the streets of his home city Mumbai as he closed in on a century in Mohali. When he was out before reaching three figures, you could hear a low rumble as a nation collectively groaned.

That would have included Akhilesh Chaturvedi, a patient at the Fortis hospital on the outskirts of the city. He brought forward his spine surgery so it wouldn't clash with the match, and he will have watched the semifinal from his bed as he recovers.

One of the official World Cup sponsors, Reliance, gave workers in their Infrastructure division the day off, while others simply left their offices early short before the afternoon start. Cinema chains, bars, clubs and restaurants were all showing the action – many charging for tickets to control demand.

And even in one of Asia's largest slums, Dharavi – featured in the movie "Slumdog Millionaire" – saw people crowding into whichever ram-shackle hut had a telly.

The poverty and deprivation visible in a place like Dharavi is often physically shocking. And yet, any concerns about food or sanitation were brushed to one side as India and Pakistan went head-to-head.

No doubt there were similar scenes of passion in Pakistan. Two nations, united by their love of cricket, no matter how distant the relationship between their respective governments.

The International Cricket Council has decided that the 2015 World Cup will involve just 10 teams – four fewer than this year.

It’s a decision which has been endorsed by Australia captain Ricky Ponting, who believes the so-called "minnows" of the game just aren’t competitive enough and that one-sided matches compromise the tournament.

Cricket is a massive sport, but its popularity is restricted to certain pockets in the world. For many people outside these areas, the game is like a foreign language – very difficult to understand. So shouldn’t organizers be trying to encourage cricket's global growth rather than discourage it? It is called the "World" Cup, after all!

Yes, Kenya and Canada were crushed in their opening matches, but the Netherlands did themselves extremely proud by giving heavyweights England a real scare.

By having some of the lesser cricket nations involved, it’s simply more interesting because it’s not just about the usual suspects. It adds the element of the unknown, and keeps the Test nations on their toes!

Ponting says he’s not sure how much a team can learn from being on the receiving end of a thumping – but I don’t agree. I’m sure that Kenya took quite a lot from the 10-wicket loss to New Zealand, despite scoring only 69 runs, and will come out stronger and more experienced next time. At least they’ll get the chance to show what they can do. At the next tournament in Australia and New Zealand four years from now, they’ll likely be watching from afar.

As a trade-off, the ICC has said the World Twenty20 competition will expand to include more nations – but as any cricket fan knows, this form of the game is more for entertainment value than anything else. It’s short, sweet and spectacular – but not cricket in its purest form and it's not going to help produce top-level one-day or Test cricketers.

So the longer forms of the game will continue to be dominated by the same old teams, and the gap between rich and poor will grow larger. How can the Associate nations compete when they are not given a chance to play on the global stage against the best teams in the world? What motivation will children from these countries have to play cricket?

The minnows likely wouldn’t be minnows if they played the bigger teams on a more regular basis. I would argue that just playing at the World Cup isn’t enough – but for the ICC it seems to be too much!

It's hard to travel around Dhaka this week without running into Stumpy, mascot to the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup. The city is dotted with posters of the upbeat, cartoonish blue elephant. In each one, he's holding a cricket bat-shaped clock, counting down to the second the World Cup begins.

As if anyone in cricket-mad Bangladesh could forget.

This is Bangladesh's first chance to host a major international sporting event, and everyone here is bursting with pride. We got a taste of it when we stopped to interview some fans playing a casual game at a Dhaka university. Even the security guard wandered over to share his thoughts on the upcoming action. "Everyone is excited that the World Cup is going to be held here," he said. "We are all feeling good. We are expecting the Bangladesh team will win." His sentiments were echoed by the crowd around him.

In all, eight matches will be played here, six in the capital Dhaka and two in the port city Chittagong. Neighbors Sri Lanka and India share the hosting duties, with Mumbai having the honor of holding the final match.

Bangladesh is spending roughly $45 million on the event, which a spokesperson said involved the most "massive security operation in the history of Bangladesh." Over 2,000 policemen will be present at Sher-e-Bangla Cricket Stadium and surrounding roofs and roads will be cleared. The country's elite police forces, including the SWAT and RAB, will be present.

Dhaka is busy with the finishing touches. Two weeks before the first match, a visit to Sher-e-Bangla Cricket Stadium revealed workers applying a final dose of paint to the banisters and groundskeepers mowing the lawns. The stadium is small by international standards, seating only 25,000, and the limited number of tickets has been a sore point here. The Bangladesh Cricket Board gave away 10,000 seats per match to government officials, VIPs and the ICC, leaving the country's millions of cricket fans to vie for the remaining 15,000. Hopefuls queued for as long as three days for tickets, and many left empty-handed.

But if the scarceness of tickets has dampened enthusiasm, it is hard to tell. Games will be displayed on giant screens throughout Dhaka, Chittagong and the country's 64 districts. With the opening match between Bangladesh and rival India, expect much of the country to be watching.

CNN's World Sport will be broadcasting its predictions for 2011 in upcoming shows between December 31-January 2. In the third of a series of preview blogs, Terry Baddoo takes a look at the contenders for next year's Cricket World Cup.

On present form, I wouldn’t put much money on Australia claiming their fourth consecutive World Cup title next year. In fact, in their current state of mind it’s going to take a Herculean effort for the Aussies to even make a fist of it on the Indian sub-continent when the four-yearly event starts in late February.

At the time of writing, not only do they trail England in the Ashes series, but there seems to be a massive loss of confidence in their leadership, with serious questions being asked about skipper Ricky Ponting for the first time I can remember. But the one-day game is not Test cricket, and if it becomes a question of guts, you cannot rule the Aussies out - especially as they are still the top-ranked team in the 50-over format.

Australia's current nemesis, England, have never won the World Cup, but are as well-placed as anyone to break their duck. They won the Twenty20 World Cup, and have that swashbuckling X-factor in the shape of an in-form Kevin Pietersen, who recalls the halcyon days of the great Ian Botham in his ability to rise to the big occasion.

Home advantage will obviously be a factor for India and Sri Lanka. The Indians have had a mixed year in the lead-up to the World Cup despite retaining their place as the world's top team in the five-day game, though they’ve emerged with a blend of youth and experience with lots of competition for places that could undoubtedly make them a force.

That said, several big names have said they fear that India may buckle under the weight of expectation from their passionate home fans, who, if the razzle-dazzle of the Indian Premier League Twenty20 competition is anything to go by, will surely turn this tournament into a festival and a pressure cooker for their own team.

Sri Lanka will be under slightly less pressure, as they host only 12 of the matches, while India get 29 and Bangladesh just eight. The Sri Lankans will nonetheless be expected to shine. And while I’ve read that some experts believe they’re not consistent enough to go all the way, they’re currently third in the ODI world rankings, behind Australia and India, so must be doing something right.

South Africa are just behind them in fourth, and some have the Proteas as dark-horse title contenders. They certainly won’t lack for preparation, as their grandly-named “Operation World Cup” has expressly focused on producing a side that can end their long wait for a first success in the tournament.

Pakistan, who were stripped of hosting rights for security reasons, also have the bit between their teeth, and recently held a special week-long training camp which focused heavily on their ailing batsman. They’ll precede the World Cup with three Twenty20 matches, two Test matches and six one-dayers in New Zealand, and will arrive ready, willing, if not 100% able to lift the World Cup for the second time.

So, which of these teams will lift the trophy? Or will it be none of the above? After all, I didn’t even mention New Zealand or two-time winners the West Indies. Well, I’m not going to profess any inside knowledge, and I'm willing to bow to those who follow the game more closely than I do.

All the same, I'm going with my gut. This is England’s year. Unless, of course, you know different.

Having reported from Australia on every day of every Test match during England’s 5-0 whitewash in the last Ashes contest there, I believe Andrew Strauss and his men face a mammoth task to win this series.

Yes, England’s team is more settled than Australia’s and, yes, they have shown better recent form and a more coherent and consistent selection policy. However, no Ashes series was ever won with superior rhetoric before the action got under way.

If that sounds obvious, it’s worth transporting you back to November 2006, just 14 months after England won back the famous little Ashes urn in a scintillating contest on home soil -– and they had high hopes of winning “Down Under” for the first time in 20 years.

Michael Vaughan was injured, so England were captained by Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff –- almost as big a talisman to his team as Michael Jordan to the Chicago Bulls or Colin Montgomerie to a European Ryder Cup side.

By now, most of you will have read how fast bowler Steve Harmison –- who had terrorized Australia’s batsmen with his pace and bounce the year before –- lamely bowled his opening ball of the 2006-07 Ashes series so wide that it went straight to his skipper, Flintoff, at second slip.

My recollection is that the loudest noise in the Gabba at that moment was the collective groan of England’s large media contingent. Journalists take care to be subjective when reporting on any of their country’s sports teams but no-one enjoyed detailing the demise of Fred and his men over the next couple of months.

So here we are again and, at the very least, we can be optimistic for a closer contest this time. Although Australia were head and shoulders above every cricketing nation in the world for almost two decades, they are certainly not the force they were.

They’ve dropped down to fifth in the global Test rankings and there are ominous echoes of their wilderness years during the 1980s.

Back then, Allan Border had the task of leading his country out of its cricketing problems. Now, Australia’s current captain Ricky Ponting has a different problem. Can he leave a squad capable of beating the best in the world before he hangs up his spikes? Beating the English and reclaiming the Ashes would be a start.

Forget Benjamin Button. The curious case of Zulqarnain Haider is far stranger – and his plight has piled the pressure on cricket’s governing body to stamp out corruption as quickly as possible.

Here is a young cricketer who appears to have given up his dreams of an international career because he became fearful for his safety and that of his family.

The big, unanswered question, on a day of confused and conflicting reports, is ... why?

If you take the story at face value, Zulqarnain claims to have been approached by men in Dubai, speaking in Urdu but not with Pakistani accents, who tried to get the player to fake his performance during matches in return for money.

The 24-year old felt unable to report this approach to either the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) or the International Cricket Council (ICC) and he was so scared that, hours before his country’s fifth one day international against South Africa, he fled to Britain.

However, a Pakistan journalist who spoke to CNN’s World Sport show, said that he had spoken to Zulqarnain on the phone and that the player is already regretting his actions. He has frightened his family as well as angering the PCB and now might be desperately trying to close the lid on the Pandora’s box he has opened.

Either Zulqarnain is doubting how much danger he was actually in. Or he is realizing there may be repercussions to further damaging his country’s already battered cricketing reputation. Whatever the truth, the ICC needs to act quickly and decisively.

If this is the latest example of a cricketer being preyed upon by a powerful, criminal betting ring then the sport is in a bigger mess than any of us realized. Imagine the outcry if an up-and-coming footballer went AWOL before a World Cup qualifier because they feared for their life.

Surely, fans and national associations would demand that FIFA maintains safety for the players? So why is the ICC taking such a cautious approach?

The governing body says this is firstly a matter for the PCB even though it goes to the heart of how the sport is run around the world. While the ICC is right to say it can only help if Zulqarnain contacts them, the onus is on the organization to create an environment where the player feels safe to do so.

Cricket’s governing body and London’s Metropolitan police are running separate but parallel investigations into allegations of match fixing and spot fixing in the sport. Maybe it’s time to inject some urgency into that process.

Some years ago there was a footballer in the top flight of the English game called Vinnie Jones.

A committed hard man, for sure, but also a player who only had to breathe on an opponent to get the referee reaching for his card and the football authorities up in arms in righteous indignation.

It was a monkey see monkey do situation, a self-fulfilling prophecy which played right into the hands of the tabloid media whose stock in trade is negativity.

We see it off the sports field too, with wayward celebrities singled out by the tabloids as the “It” girls or boys.

Or, more appropriately, the “Get” girls or boys. American movie star, Lindsay Lohan, is a current example. She can’t do right for doing wrong in the eyes of the tabloid media who’ve put a target on her back with a paparazzi lens trained on the bullseye.

At present, the “Get” boys in sport are the cricketers of Pakistan. “Exposed” in the last few weeks as allegedly inveterate cheats, they’ve been portrayed by Britain’s Sun and News of the World newspapers, (both from the News Corporation stable), as players who’ll throw no balls and surrender their wickets with impunity if it means getting their hands on the payola offered by the world’s equally inveterate gambling syndicates.

There’s even a sexy new buzzword to headline the whole sorry affair “Spot Fixing”..

ta-dah!….All this without, as yet, a shred of corroborated evidence beyond that offered by the tabloid investigation.

In time of course, it may all turn out to be true. Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Asif, Wahab Riaz, or any combination thereof, may have colluded with a syndicate in a cash for no-balls betting scam.

The entire Pakistani cricket team, or certain members of it, may, inexplicably, have thrown caution to the wind while already under the microscope, and failed to play with a straight bat against England in the third one day international of their series. But the fact is we don’t know.

That, of course, never worries a tabloid news editor. It’s the casting of aspersions that sells, and, at present, that’s what we’re dealing with here.

Plus, if those aspersions can stir up a bonus hornets nest, as seems to be the case with the counter claim by Pakistan Cricket Board chairman, Ijaz Butt, who says bookies have intimated that it was England that lost on purpose, then that’s all grist to the mill, because this story can run and run.

Therefore, with such dubious motivations underlying the bearers of bad news I’m pleased to see that the International Cricket Council is proceeding with extreme caution.

Not only because the claims against Pakistan undermine the integrity of one of the world’s most passionate cricket-playing nations, and therefore one of the sport’s most lucrative markets, but also because the ICC’s own reputation is on the line.

It’s already been embarrassed by the fact that a tabloid news organization appears to know more about what’s really going on in cricket than the sport’s governing body.

And it now needs to tread a very careful path by way of a response to maintain its own credibility. Yes, we live in the print and be damned world of the tabloids, but the burden of proof should still lie with the prosecution. And, as far as I can see, for the moment, the cricketers of Pakistan only appear guilty by reputation.