Ton of tons beckons Tendulkar in 2000th Test. | 2000th test match | India vs. England.

Test cricket will celebrate its 2,000th match with a series opener between England and India at Lord's that promises to delight both statisticians and Sachin Tendulkar should the 'Little Master' mark an already landmark occasion with a 100th international hundred.

The match is also the 100th Test between England, who gave birth to cricket, and India, now top of the ICC's Test rankings, the 50-over world champions and the sport's financial powerhouse.

That means it will feature a clash between the 'old world' and the 'new' - as there was, albeit in a different fashion, when England travelled to Melbourne to play Australia in the very first Test in 1877.

Tendulkar arrives at the 'home of cricket', as Lord's likes to call itself, having had to contend with a level of admiration arguably unequalled in both its frenzy and duration in cricket history.

And having scored a record 99 hundreds - 51 in Tests and 48 in one-day internationals in a career that started when he was a 16-year-old in 1989 - that adulation will only intensify should he reach three figures at Lord's, where his previous Test-best is a modest 37.

The ever-modest Tendulkar, his team-mates and opponents have all said the same thing: there is more to this match than Sachin. "I'm not thinking of records," he insisted. "I'm just thinking of enjoying this tour," added Tendulkar, whose four previous Tests at Lord's have yielded a meagre top score of 37.

And he is far from the only star in a powerful top-order featuring the likes of Rahul Dravid, who made 95 at Lord's on his Test debut in 1996 , and Venkatsai Laxman.

"It would be very, very risky to focus all our energies on one player," said England off-spinner Graeme Swann. "Sure, he's the best player of the modern generation, but if we focus on one guy another will sneak in the back door and take it away from us. In MS Dhoni (India's captain) they have possibly the most charismatic player India has ever had, with the sway he holds in that country now. I think he is the most important player in that team now. He leads from the front, is a very dangerous cricketer and if we can get at anyone then he is probably the key man."

India could rue the shoulder injury that has ruled out Virender Sehwag from at least the first two Tests of this four-match contest - a series that if England win by 2-0, 3-1 or better will see them replace the tourists at the top of the ICC's Test table.

Sehwag's fearless strokeplay has confounded the traditional notion of openers merely 'seeing off' the new ball and, however well Gautam Gambhir and Abhinav Mukund, India's new first wicket pair start, they are unlikely to take the match away from England in quite the same style.

England too boast an in-form top order with Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott both in the runs. And yet it remains as true now as it ever did, that the side that can most easily take their opponents 20 wickets will emerge victorious.

That was the case in 2007 when India whose attack, then as now, was led by left-arm fast bowler Zaheer Khan won a Test series in England 1-0. "If we can keep our fast bowlers fit, then we'll be very competitive," said Dravid, whose team will have to contend with an England attack featuring giant fast bowler Chris Tremlett, who impressed against India in his debut series four years ago.

They will also have to acclimatise quickly should the swinging conditions associated with Lord's and Trent Bridge, the venues for the first two Tests of this series, emerge again if the skies in London and Nottingham are overcast.

This tour has seen India, who last week drew against a Somerset side where 'guest' Andrew Strauss, the England captain, managed 78 and 109, play just the one warm-up match hot on the heels of their arrival from a series win in the West Indies.

Duncan Fletcher always used to play-down the importance of warm-up fixtures when he was coach of England. Now the Zimbabwean is in charge of India, time will tell if he regrets a schedule inconceivable at the dawn of Test cricket 134 years ago.

MS Dhoni leads India's five among Time 100. | ms dhoni | times magazine.

Led by India's "Captain Fantastic" Mahendra Singh Dhoni, five Indians have made it to the Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world, whose "ideas spark dialogue and dissent and sometimes even revolution."

Other Indians on the Time 100 list released on Thursday are "Titan of Industry" Mukesh Ambani, "Brain Mapper" VS Ramachandran, "Philanthropist" Azim Premji and "Change Agent" Aruna Roy.

The list is topped by Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who became the "Spokesman for a Revolution" in Egypt.

US President Barack Obama, ranked 86, trails far behind his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (43), Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (6), WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (9) and Pakistani spy master Ahmed Shuja Pasha (17).

Ranked 52nd, Dhoni, under whose leadership India won its first cricket World Cup in 28 years, Timenoted, "is now universally acknowledged as India's best captain ever. He's also its most likable, exuding both cool confidence and down-to-earth humility."

"Dhoni doesn't just lead a cricket team, he's also India's captain of hope. And he didn't just win India the World Cup, he also taught India how to win," it said.

The story of Mukesh Ambani, ranked 61st, "is straight out of the Bollywood movies of his hometown,"Time said noting "he started out in life crammed with six people into a two-bedroom tenement in the most congested part of central Mumbai."

"Ambani, 54, also took the firm his father founded - Reliance Industries - and turned it into India's largest private-sector company, a $45 billion petrochemicals giant," it said describing it as "a new kind of Indian company, built through adroit manipulation of governments and the stock market but also enriching millions of shareholders."

Placed 79th, VS Ramachandran, 59, "once described as the Marco Polo of neuroscience," the Timesaid "has mapped some of the most mysterious regions of the mind."

"With his simple, creative and innovative ideas," Ramachandran, "best known for developing a therapy for phantom-limb pain in which a mirror is used to reflect the intact limb, creating the illusion that the missing one is still there," it said "is changing how our brains think about our minds."

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who has profiled "philanthropist" Azim Premji for the Time, says, "If anyone personifies India's economic transformation, it is Azim Premji, chairman of the information-technology powerhouse Wipro Ltd."

"A pioneer of India's IT-outsourcing industry, Premji helped unleash a generation of skilled technical professionals who make up India's growing middle class," he wrote.

Bringing up the rear for India on the Time list is "Change Agent" Aruna Roy, who "starting from a tiny village in the deserts of Rajasthan in the 1980s began a long campaign to bring transparency to India's notoriously corrupt bureaucracy."

"Many social activists clamour for India to do more for the dispossessed. A former civil servant, Roy doesn't just condemn a broken system; she changes it," it noted.

Cricket World cup 2011 funny pictures/images.

Midas Singh Dhoni - the man with the Midas touch.| The Man Who Can Do No Wrong. | Ms Dhoni.

Over the last few weeks, Mahendra Singh Dhoni has done things which have made little sense to India’s supporters. Questions were asked. Why Chawla? Why not Ashwin? Why Sreesanth? Why not Sreesanth? Why isn’t Harbhajan taking wickets? Some questioning was justified. Some wasn’t.

Some of Dhoni’s answers were strange.

“Chawla needs to be given confidence.”

“Ashwin is mentally tough.”

“Harbhajan is a big match player.”

“I cannot control Sreesanth.”

You couldn’t get through to Dhoni. He must have smiled inwardly and thought, “Fools. What do they know?” He carried on, living in the bubble that couldn’t be pricked. Like he had a master plan only he understood. Like everything would fall into place at the right moment. In the end, it did.

But as Dhoni revealed after the final, the pressure on him was immense. It was best displayed in the dying moments of India’s chase when he nearly ran himself out. For the first time, horror occupied his creaseless visage. Not tension. Not anger. But pure horror. Dhoni screamed at Yuvraj Singh for the near mishap and hit his pad with his bat in disgust. But this incident didn’t deter him.

Good Old Grit

When Dhoni promoted himself over Yuvraj and Suresh Raina, it wasn’t just the World Cup at stake. Dhoni had been off-colour. But he wanted to shield the two left-handers from Sri Lankan off-spin. Had his brave intentions not yielded runs, questions about Dhoni’s place in the side would have been asked. It was that risky.

Coming out to bat in that situation must be the gutsiest thing a captain has done in a World Cup final since a half-fit, out-of-form Imran Khan went in at three in 1992. Imran made 72 to steer the innings to respectability, then returned to take the final English wicket to seal the win.

As individuals who look within for answers often do, Dhoni said he had a point to prove only to himself.

"I took a quite few decisions tonight and if we hadn't had won I would have been asked quite a few questions," he said after the game. "The pressure had got to me in the previous games. In this match I wanted to bat up the order and Gary Kirsten backed me as did the senior players. I had a point to prove to myself."

A New World Order

It’s hard to fathom how a captain with a penchant for safety-first methods is so successful. Dhoni isn’t like the Australian or South African captains of the past, who would, in their single-minded pursuit of winning, create chances for the opposition.

Dhoni attacks only when absolutely necessary. From the intuitive leader he was at the start, he is now a calculative, risk-free strategist. He has spread himself thin: he also has to keep wickets and bat in the middle-order. Then he has to deal with the beast called the fans’ expectations.

Yet, in the last four years he has won nearly everything worth winning: World Twenty20, the Test No. 1 rank, briefly the No. 1 ODI rank, IPL, Champions League, and now the World Cup. In between, he also nailed other elusive wins: Asia Cup, CB Series, multiple Test wins over Australia, multiple ODI series wins in Sri Lanka, a Test series in New Zealand, to name a few.

The risk-free approach reflects in his batting too. From the go-getter batsman six years ago, he’s become someone who doesn’t want to be caught playing the rash shot. He wants to build. He wants to be patient. While this has worked for Dhoni the captain, it hasn’t for Dhoni the batsman in recent times.

His magnificent 91 in the final was all heart, all guts, something you would associate with the Dhoni of the old. Playing a big hand in the final would make winning it doubly special for Dhoni.

So if there’s a wishlist for the newly crowned world champions, it is this: if they tighten up the bowling, attack a little more, and replace the non-performing ‘big-match players’, India will be truly hard to topple from their top spot.

And skipper, please play those backfoot punches more often.

The final winning moments.