Cricket will provide more memorable vignettes when a 116-kg police van driver bowls to Sachin Tendulkar, the ultimate cricket pro. His captain pleads that there should be no mirth to girth. His mom thinks the media is insensitive in referring to her favourite son as a ‘Bermua-pie angle’. But then this is cricket, not sumo wrestling, is what critics of the minnowsparading in the World Cup will aver.

The Bermuda cop Dwayne Leverock's presence is evocative of the earliest amateur era in the game when the farmer, the greengrocer and the tailor rubbed shoulders with the aristocracy leading to the famous political remark that there would have been no French revolution had the Parisians taken to cricket and spread it in their land.When Leverock foxed Kevin Pietersen and had him stumped in a warm up match, he displayed the basic skills of a left arm orthodox spin bowler. To use those skills, he needed to use just his brain, not his brawn. The beauty of the game is anyone can show skills at it, not only the lithe, intensely coached and trained-to the-minute athlete.

The jail van driver, the pizza delivery boy, the janitor, the schoolteacher and a host of day job holders are in the World Cup mix. They may not be great cricketers but they bring a certain spirit to the event that would otherwise have had very little romanticism to it. The game may have got very professional in the most modern era. Even so, it must have some time for the amateur.

The term 'minnows', even if it is a bit demeaning, might not be politically incorrect. The six minor teams that are in the Caribbean to play the World Cup along with the nine Test-playing nations and Test-discredited Zimbabwe, may not beat any of the big eight. What they will do is add colour to the global showpiece.

If the Sri Lankans were not allowed into the World Cup in 1975, would they have put on such a show of defiance that Lillee and Thommo had to bounce them out in order to avoid embarrassment? Had Zimbabwe not qualified for the event in 1983, would we ever had the greatest of the early upsets in which David beat Goliath?

Zimbabwe's victory over Australia is the stuff of legend now. In happier times, that nation had fine cricketers, mostly amateur, who could dare to dream and realise such a dream when they won at Trent Bridge, in their very first match in the big league. They were captained by Duncan Fletcher who was then a professional in the English leagues.

In more cynical times, the performance of Bangladesh in beating Pakistan in 1999 was greeted with more than skepticism. Whatever the circumstances, or the whispers behind the coup, the truth remains that amateurs had again put one over the professionals. Why, Canada did beat Bangladesh once, while Kenya brought off one of the biggest surprises of any Cup by beating the West Indies, in Pune in 1996.

The minnows will all be packing their bags in a couple of weeks, leaving the one-day wonderland to the pros. They would have taken more from the event than they give to it. But, as a global exercise, the World Cup would have done itself a huge favour by giving the amateurs their grand days in the sun.

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