Gautam Bhattacharyya
Sports writer

Image source, Getty Images

Here’s one for the quizzers: Which batter holds the record for scoring the maximum runs in a single edition of the World Cup?

Easy, isn’t it? Of course it’s Sachin Tendulkar - with 673 runs from 11 matches in the 2003 edition in South Africa where India ended as the runners-up.

It included one century and six fifties, but the innings which gets talked about the most is a brilliant, counter-attacking 98 off 75 deliveries against Pakistan in a must-win league game.

Not too many people knew that Tendulkar who had endured several injuries during his 24-year-long career, was playing such a long tournament with a finger injury – which had to be treated in England immediately after the event.

When India were chasing 274, a tough target those days, the batter launched into some audacious upper cuts against Shoaib Akhtar as the Men in Blue chased down the total.

"According to me, that knock was the best innings of the World Cup," said an awestruck Virender Sehwag, Tendulkar’s opening partner in the match.

Gautam Bhattacharyya
Sports writer

Image source, AFP

Here's another trivia - this one's about Pakistani bowler Wahab Riaz.

Despite the green shirts boasting of the likes of Aqib Javed and Shoaib Akhtar, the best wicket haul in India-Pakistan clashes in the World Cup has been by Riaz.

As someone who often went under the radar, Riaz possessed everything that a quality fast bowler would need - pace, bounce, movement and aggression aplenty - and it was all on view during their 2011 semi-finals in India’s Mohali.

Riaz finished with 5/46, during which he cleaned up Yuvraj Singh - Player of the Series - for a golden duck.

Four years down the line, he was at his best again in 2015 in the quarter final against Australia - where one of his overs against Shane Watson would go down as one of the greatest hostile overs in the history of World Cup.

Soutik Biswas
Reporting from Ahmedabad

Image source, AFP

A year later, Indian PM Manmohan Singh tried his hand at cricket diplomacy - he invited former president Pervez Musharraf to watch a one-day match in Delhi in April 2005.

Pakistan thrashed India by 159 runs and won the six-match ODI series 4-2, an amazing comeback after trailing 0-2.

Opening for Pakistan, Shahid Afridi scored 44 quicksilver runs in 23 balls, and returned later to pick up two Indian wickets.

Three years later, nine gunmen attacked Mumbai and more than 170 lives were lost.

India blamed Pakistan-based militants for plotting the terror attack - and peace talks were shelved again.

Soutik Biswas
Reporting from Ahmedabad

Image source, Getty Images

In 2004 - three years after the failed Agra summit between the two sides - the then Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee travelled to Pakistan for a regional summit to break the ice as India announced a cricket tour of Pakistan.

"Mr Vajpayee has, in fact, opened the innings," said Shaharyar Khan, who was then chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board.

Pakistan was to host an Indian team after 19 years. Twenty thousand visas were issued to Indian fans for the five-week tour.

It was a resounding success and Indian fans returned with incredible stories of Pakistani hospitality.

India won both the Test and one-day series, both closely fought.

Soutik Biswas
Reporting from Ahmedabad

Image source, Getty Images

Relations between India and Pakistan have been frosty for as long as one can remember.

But there was a time when the neighbours tried “cricket diplomacy” in an attempt to mend ties.

In February 1987, Pakistani president Zia-ul-Haq started it all by inviting himself to a Test match against India in Jaipur and met then Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi to defuse tensions.

Delhi had launched a huge military exercise , externalon its border during the winter, and a rattled Islamabad had responded by bolstering troops on its side.

The game in Jaipur turned out to be a dismal affair, plodding to a draw after rain washed out a day's play.

Two games later, Pakistan grabbed its first Test series win in India.

Reporting on Zia’s visit, the India Today magazine said: "As an exercise in public relations, his whirlwind, unofficial, ‘cricket for peace’ tour paid rich dividends.”

... but he's not forgotten.

Hotel-owners in India are counting on the World Cup to make their business boom this year.

In the 10 cities where matches are being played - Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Dharamsala, Delhi, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Pune, Mumbai and Kolkata - hotels and homestays are nearly all sold out.

In Ahmedabad, hoteliers have reported a 200% increase in bookings on matchdays compared with the average daily room requirements in August, reports CNBC TV, external.

In Dharamsala - where India will play New Zealand on 22 October - the bookings have risen by 605%. Room occupancy rates in the capital, Delhi, and cities such as Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Kolkata have also seen a substantial increase, reports say.

Vikas Pandey
Reporting from Ahmedabad

As we approached the stadium, we were greeted by the sounds of fans cheering and blowing horns. There's so much excitement here!

Gautam Bhattacharyya
Sports writer

Image source, Getty

That little boy is not the only Kohli fan.

The cricketer is also held in high esteem by former and current players and fans in Pakistan. He is the lone centurion for India in the history of the marquee clashes in the World Cup, scoring 107 off 126 balls at Adelaide in 2015.

A Kohli or Babar debate often does the rounds in recent years, but the two ace batters hold each other in high regard. A tweet from the Pakistan captain, which went viral last year when Kohli was going through a bad patch, was: "This too shall pass."

Kohli, meanwhile, has already called Babar the current best all-format batter.

Vikas Pandey
Reporting from Ahmedabad

Nine-year-old Dhananjay K is a huge Virat Kohli fan and is expecting him to win the match for India.

His parents are disappointed that they couldn’t get tickets but Dhananjay is still going to cheer for Kohli from his home.

His parents brought him to the stadium to show him the excitement surrounding the match and bought him a Kohli jersey.

A group of Indian fans in Kanpur city performed rituals at a temple to pray for their team's victory.

Caroline Davies
Reporting from Islamabad

Pakistan is building up to today's game with screens in public spaces and cinemas screening the match.

But there’s still disappointment that Pakistani fans will for the most part not be able to cross the border to attend the match. The Pakistani cricket board has told the BBC that while journalists have been granted visas, fans are still waiting.

The country’s caretaker prime minister said that India should keep politics out of sport and that if the situations were reversed, Pakistan would have issued visas to India’s fans.

The Indian government has not commented yet on the status of visas for Pakistan’s fans.

Vikas Pandey
Reporting from Ahmedabad

We are just hours away from the start of one of cricket’s most famous rivalries and the area around the stadium is packed with fans and curious onlookers.

The match will start at 14:00 local time [08:30GMT] and it's likely to set new viewership records.

This is what we're seeing right now.

Zoya Mateen
Reporting from Delhi

Image source, Getty Images

A cricket match between India and Pakistan is perhaps the most politically charged derby. The two sides have only played in multilateral tournaments and neutral venues since 2013 because of political tensions.

This time too, tensions ran high after Pakistan initially said it might skip the World Cup. The statement came after Jay Shah, secretary of the Indian cricket board (BCCI), said in October last year that India would not tour Pakistan for the Asia Cup and asked the tournament to be moved to a neutral venue. (The Indian team did eventually play their matches, but in Sri Lanka.)

Pakistan's board, PCB, responded with "surprise and disappointment" and said the decision could "impact" Pakistan's participation in the World Cup. But in August, PCB decided to send their team after all, ending months of uncertainty. And now they’re here - so all is good!

Image source, AFP

Here's a little trivia from the pages of history.

Sachin Tendulkar once gave his “favourite bat” to Waqar Younis to take to Sialkot - known for its sports goods industries - to get a replica made.

But Abhishek Mukherjee and Joy Bhattacharjya write in their book that Younis gave the bat to Shahid Afridi as he stepped out to play in the 1996 Pakistan ODI against Sri Lanka in Nairobi. The young leg spinner, who was making his debut with the match, had been promoted to one-down. Afridi slammed a hundred in 37 balls - at that point the fastest in ODI cricket.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Afridi, in his interviews, has said he has “safely kept the bat with which I played my first innings” and that it “created history”.

What’s not known is whether Tendulkar ever got the replacement bat.

Pakistan's caretaker prime minister Anwar ul-Haq Kakar has posted wishes for his team on X (formerly Twitter) hours ahead of the match.

Vikas Pandey
Reporting from Ahmedabad

Outside the stadium last night, we met hundreds of fans - dancing, singing and just being in a festive mood.

Some of them carried huge Indian flags, others wore jerseys of their favourite Indian player.

But not all of them will be inside the stadium today as many don’t have tickets.

Being outside the stadium is their way of supporting the team. One fan, however, sighed and said he wished tickets were available and cheaper.

Soutik Biswas
Reporting from Ahmedabad

Image source, Getty Images

Walking around Ahmedabad over the past couple of days, I found little sign of any public excitement over the game.

Banners carrying pictures of Indian cricketers were confined to the bustling Motera Road, which runs alongside the Narendra Modi Stadium.

Amit Pawar, a vendor hawking Indian team merchandise on the pavement outside the venue, said he had sold only 12 jerseys in two days. "There is very little enthusiasm," he said.

The only sparks of excitement came from the arrests of some young men selling counterfeit tickets and unverified accounts of cricket fans feigning medical conditions to secure hospital rooms, their attempts to find hotel accommodations having fallen through.

Cricket historians tell you that even the India-Pakistan rivalry has a rather tepid history in Ahmedabad, which is not exactly a cricketing hub. The rivals have met here only three times since 1987. India has won one (20T), lost one (ODI) and drawn one (Test) game.

But the cricket rivalry continues to be fierce - and it will surely come alive again in a packed arena today.

Read more here

The BBC's Anshul Verma gives you a glimpse of how fans in Ahmedabad are preparing for the match...

Security is tight at the stadium.

More than 7,000 police personnel, along with nine bomb detection and disposal squads, are deployed to secure the city on match day.

Drones will keep an eye from the air.