The Pakistani team had not yet landed in the city for their three-day match, and more than 2,500 policemen had fallen into position remote controlled from a small tent outside.

Inside that `control room' sat Additional Superintendent of Police Deo Prakash Gupta, IPS, busy giving last-minute instructions to harried officers.

``No, this time there is no dummy run of the team bus,'' he smiled. But the security cover here has made the New Delhi tamasha on Thursday look like a sideshow.

``Yes, the Shiv Sena has withdrawn the threat but the tension has only increased. Now any madman can take advantage of the situation,'' said Gupta.

So, what do we have here? Mounted police forming a daunting ring in a 1 km radius round the stadium, an entire Rapid Action Forcecompany at the Pakistani team hotel, 17 drop gates around the stadium, all entry points to the city, including the railway station and bus stand under round-the-clock surveillance, 100 plainclothesmen at undisclosed points and 250 special security men at the airport.

The police are also worried about perceived threats to a vital military installation near the airport: A base for the Indian Air Force's Mirage fleet. ``That and other military establishments near here are also under heavy security cover,'' adds Gupta. More than 100 potential trouble-makers have also been rounded up in the last couple of days in the form of ``preventive arrests''.

Now, doesn't all this sound a bit overboard considering that the Pakistani team never turned up for practice today? The police might vehemently shake their head but the public, and the organisers here, certainly feel so.

And not surprisingly, hardly 1,500 tickets have been sold for the three days of cricket. ``Who will want to take the trouble of coming here forthe match despite the reduced rates? Even for a glass of water, they will have to make their way through these policemen to the stalls outside,'' said a disappointed local official who did not want to be named.

Journalists who were here in 1997 to cover the Independence Cup one-day match between Pakistan and Sri Lanka were equally amazed by the lack of response this time. ``There was a huge crowd of fans a day before that match even though India was not playing,'' said one of them. As the official summed it up quite nicely, ``They will prefer to read about the match in the papers than come here and feel as if they are stuck in a battlefield.''