You don’t have to open a newspaper to see it. Or turn on a TV set to sense it. You don’t even need to speak to another soul while walking down a busy market. The spirit has caught Dhaka. It’s in the extra sweetness of the local chai and the exaggerated welcome at hotel receptions. It’s in the exuberant chatter of the shopkeepers and the strains of a weary smile of a rickshaw-puller. As the tenth ICC World Cup gets its cavalcade together and begins its 45-day long parade, its essence has distilled down to the streets, homes and heart of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

“Bangladeshis are more than happy. Ecstatic,” says my helpful, Indophile driver in a smattering of Hindi while showing me the sights around a city so hopelessly in love with the game and eager to host the first grand spectacle in its strife-marred history. What he puts into words I already see in the glittering blue halos of fairy lights that line the arterial Airport Road. But merely one kind of luminosity does not befit the occasion. Stepping out of the hotel, I see a dazzling display in pink springing a road divider to life. The lights are arranged in patterns not unlike the design of a subcontinental woman’s item of jewellery.

But a bride in waiting is hardly a metaphor for the robust energy and verve that animates even the more solemn of the city’s monuments – the Mughal-inspired Zia Mausoleum Complex, the final resting place of ex-President Ziaur Rahman. The little bridge that connects the main road to the tomb over Crescent lake is filled with young couples, teenagers and children out in huge numbers thanks to the national holiday on account of Eid e Milad. Once across, few people actually are to be found in the area around the mausoleum proper – a simple marble tomb with tufts of grass springing from its top. But one look at the lovely, tree-splattered Ramna Park and you find the very force that the city’s moving on these days. Young boys in the middle of intense cricket battles, tiles or twigs for stumps and all manner of innovations for cricketing gear.

Another variant in cricketing kit can famously be found on the Airport Road. A gigantic cricket bat displaying the names of thousands of cricket fans egging the national side on. Motorists eagerly stop for a few minutes while passing this “landmark”, signing their names on the bat, getting friends or passers-by to take their picture.

While being served a lunch of brilliance at the reputed Fakruddin Biryani in Uttara (they even have a branch in Singapore), the diminutive and very resourceful waiter has more than just the day’s orders and tips in mind. Audaciously turning on the TV set whilst negotiating lunch orders, he predictably catches the interest of his colleagues. The staff of the popular eatery is instantly immersed in the opening overs of India’s practice match against New Zealand. The joy is short-lived as the harried owner, in a pista green kurta, restores general order.

As the day before the opening ceremony wears on, the enthusiasm of the local fans only builds up. While driving back to the hotel after an excellent meal of mutton curry and kebabs at Kosturi in downtown Gulshan, I see that the crowds around the colossal bat have multiplied. As have the smiles on people’s faces and the flashes on their cameras.

Shakib al Hasan, Tamim Iqbal and Mashrafe Mortaza, looking intentionally venomous in green body paint, a cola company’s prodigious campaign likening cricketers to mutants, tear out of hoardings all across the city much like their counterparts Dhoni and Sehwag on Indian billboards. My driver says mournfully, “Mortaza isn’t playing the World Cup [The all-rounder is out due to injury.] But Shakib al Hasan is there.” And then, as if getting to the point, “Ma’am, can you get me Sachin Tendulkar’s autograph?” I could have been in Mumbai or Karachi, Auckland or Port of Spain. Sachin, the great leveller.