This tournament has in its 24-year existence provided not just corporate support but brought a popular passion, a certain frisson, to a colonial game that many feared would not survive this millennium.

Indeed, it is one of the supreme ironies of modern cricket that the nation that sired the game has almost completely traded it in for football. It was Manchester United that did England proud this season, not its World Cup Eleven. But it doesn't matter any more.

Cricket, like Topsy, has grow'd and grow'd. It has outgrown the striped ties and Panama hats of an earlier, more sedate era, and assumed all the colour and buzz of the empire. Sunday'sAustralia-Pakistan final, played out against the red-bricked ambience of Lord's, symbolised this. Cries of Pakistan zindabad and fat kangaroo inflatables held aloft by Aussie fans demonstrated this eloquently.

Those 42 games showcased a wealth of talent that went far beyond the narrow geographical boundaries of yesteryear. Who could have even imagined that a minnow like Bangladesh could have summoned the gumption to destroy potential world champions Pakistan, or dreamt that Zimbabwe could blast its way into the Super Six? Then there are those wonderful individual performances -- a Rahul Dravid notching two centuries consecutively, a Jonty Rhodes leaping twice to pluck the ball from thin air, a Lance Klusener pounding boundary after boundary, an impetuous Shoaib `Rawalpindi Express' Akhtar, steaming down to bowl his missiles.

According to Greek theoreticians of the tragic form, it is a combination of pity and terror that creates the necessary catharsis for that truly great dramatic effect. By that score,there were many instances of both pity and terror being played out against those rolling greens. One tragic moment, guaranteed to be remembered long after this tourney becomes history, is of course that horrible mix-up in the last moments of the semi-finals.

South Africa, within a heartbeat of victory, experienced sudden death by getting run out of the game. Klusener, by heading straight to the pavilion without even a backward glance, was merely expressing his extreme distress at his and his country's loss. Cricket is not cricket if it doesn't pack the unexpected. Ask Wasim Akhram about this.

His bombast about the certain victory of his team couldn't make it happen. There is, alas, many a slip between the Cup and the lip. And that's cricket. In a week's time, the strawberries-and-cream pace of Wimbledon tennis will soon overtake all this. It will be Pete Sampras and Martina Hingis who will be holding court. But the images of these six weeks will continue to linger, whether it is that of David Shepherddoing a little skip over a flung ball, or a Shane Warne holding aloft a Cup that 12 nations had long dreamt of bringing home.