Stronger, faster, it doesn’t get bigger than this

As far as the players are concerned, Scotland’s Iain Philip is the oldest who will be 42 on June nine. Pakistan take credit for bringing the youngest in Shahid Afridi who is just 19.

For Arjuna Ranatunga, captain of defending champions Sri Lanka, this will be the fifth World Cup appearance. He made his World Cup debut in 1983 at the age of 20.

The fastest bowler in the tournament will be Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar with speed of 96 mph. Allan Donald (South Africa) follows second with 93 mph and England’s Darren Gough third with 92.5 mph.

A ball coming at such speed gives the batsman only 0.39 seconds to decide the shot.

The matches, which will be watched by more than half a million people in the stadia, carries a record prize money of one million dollars for thewinner, with the winning trophy valued at 27,000 pounds and weighing 11 kgs.

During the tournament, over 75 tonnes of grass will be mowed at the 21 match venues. More than 2,500 hours will be spent for this purpose.

Over nine miles of advertising boards are being produced and erected around the country. The competing teams will be provided with close to 10,000 items of clothing.

Also more than 2,500 square metres of material will be used to produce the team strips for the various countries. With 42 matches being played in the biggest ever World Cup, the umpires will say the word `over’ more than 4,000 times. More than 4,200 overs will be bowled during the entire series.

The official photographic agency, Allsport, will take over 60,000 shots for which they will use more than 5,000 feets of film.

Host broadcasters SKY and BBC will have 42 commentators speaking on the matches which will be broadcasted in around 120 countries to a cumulative audience of two billion.

SKY and BBC are producing 336 hoursof match broadcast between them and will use 160 miles of cable and eight mobile studios for the purpose.