Cyclist Victoria Pendleton, heptathlon star Jessica Ennis, David Beckham with the Olympic torch

It will be over in less than 10 seconds but many people are willing to pay inflated prices of £1,000 or even more to glimpse Usain Bolt in the 100 metres final in the 2012 London Olympics. Understandably, spectators want to see the big names — and there are plenty of them. But unlike the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in 2010 when the stadiums were initially quite empty, ordinary Londoners have found it near impossible to get hold of tickets for the sellout popular events because of computer glitches and other problems.

A proportion of the million tickets distributed by Locog (London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games) to participating nations have found their way to the black market, thanks to corrupt officials overseas, according to a dossier prepared by The Sunday Times.

One Indian who hasn’t had a problem getting hold of tickets is Lakshmi Mittal. The steel tycoon has managed to acquire 1,100 tickets though he insists his privileged position gave him “the right only to buy the tickets”.

One can’t begrudge the former Calcutta boy his little perks — after all, he has provided steel worth £16.6m towards the £22.7m cost of the ArcelorMittal Orbit, the dominating 114.5m tall sculpture adjacent to the main stadium in Stratford, East London. It has been designed by another Indian — Mumbai-born sculptor Anish Kapoor. If nothing else, Mittal’s guests can watch the Games from the observation platform in what will probably be christened the Mittal Monument.

At the Games, Great Britain should have some home advantage. The TV cameras will linger on such glamour girls as Jessica Ennis in the heptathlon. In cycling, where Britain is especially strong, there is Victoria Pendleton. The Queen’s granddaughter, Zara Phillips, has made it to the equestrian event team — on merit. But, as in Beijing four years ago, London will no doubt throw up new stars.

How will India do?

David Beckham with the Olympic torch, London mayor Boris Johnson and Locog chair Lord Coe

Last week, at a gathering in London, the Commonwealth Journalists’ Association discussed the topic, A Modern Olympic Games: Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Succeed?

London has had the Olympics twice before — in 1908 and in 1948 — making it the only city in the world to stage the Games three times.

The consensus was that the Indian contingent wouldn’t exactly set the Thames on fire. There has been an attempt by Sanjay Verma, 27, a survivor of the Bhopal disaster of December 1984, to get Locog to think again about accepting Dow Chemical as a lead sponsor of the Games on the grounds that the US firm had bought Union Carbide, with all its liabilities, in 2001. But Verma did not get any support from Lord (Sebastian) Coe, head of Locog — and he happens to be part-Indian from his Anglo-Indian mother’s side. Even the Indian government ignored Verma’s campaign.

There is, of course, the chance that the Indians may produce one or two surprises. One man who can recall India’s glory days is Balbir Singh “senior”, who was a member of India’s hockey team which won gold on August 12, 1948, by beating Great Britain 4-0 in the final at Wembley. Balbir scored the first two goals.

Balbir, who was in London last week, is now a sprightly 88 and divides his time among his three sons in Vancouver in Canada and his daughter in Chandigarh.

It so happens that at the magnificent Royal Opera House in London, which is telling the story of the Olympic Games from its creation in 776 BC through to the London 2012 Olympics, the personal histories of 16 iconic Olympians are being featured. They include Steve Redgrave, Cathy Freeman, Kelly Holmes, Olga Korbut, Jesse Owens, Aleksandr Karelin — and Balbir Singh.

This “unique exhibition, a collaboration between the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, the Royal Opera House and BP, celebrates human strength and endeavour, passion, determination, hard work and achievement”.

India had won hockey gold in the 1928, 1932 and 1936 Olympics but as a British colony.

“In 1948 India won as a sovereign nation for the first time and the Indian tricolour went high up in the sky and our national anthem, Jana Gana Mana, sounded sweet,” Balbir points out.

“Whatever I am today, it’s because of hockey,” acknowledges a proud Balbir, who will watch the London games. “Hockey is India’s national game — I feel honoured to have played that game and won three gold medals.”

Balbir was part of the team that took hockey gold in 1952 in Helsinki beating Holland 6-1 (Balbir’s five goals, scored using a “made in Sialkot” hockey stick, remains enshrined in the Guinness World Records) and in 1956 in Melbourne when Pakistan was defeated 1-0.

He is remarkably upbeat about the direction of sport in India. “Of late things have improved a lot. This time our boys and girls will do much better than in previous years in different sports: archery, boxing, tennis, badminton — that Saina Nehwal has been doing an excellent job, she is a wonderful girl. Shooting is good but we are better in archery, I think. Abhinav Bindra will be there. In hockey, I will be very happy if we finish in the first five.” Balbir, who was born in Punjab in 1924, expresses a wish: “May I complete the century in 2024 and see the Indian team doing better and better in the coming Olympics.”

The Olympic flame was brought to Britain from Greece on May 18 by, among others, Princess Anne, David Beckham and Lord Coe who called it a “magical moment”. On its 8,000-mile journey through the UK, it will travel through 1,019 cities, towns and villages and be carried by 8,000 torchbearers, many of them, sadly, “corporate freeloaders or Z-list celebrities” (according to the Daily Mail).

However, this morning, July 1, it should have arrived in Solihull in the west Midlands where one of the torchbearers is Pankaj Taneja, a 31-year-old dentist at the nearby Birmingham Dental Hospital.

The choice of the person picked to mastermind the £27m “Isles of Wonder” opening ceremony is unusual — Danny Boyle, who has been a hero since Slumdog Millionaire picked up eight Oscars in 2009.

“The opening scene of the July 27 ceremony represents a traditional and idyllic view of the British countryside,” he said.

He knows he would get lynched if he pulled a stunt like dipping village boys in a pool of human excreta. Instead, the audience of about 62,000 in the stadium and a billion people watching worldwide will see farmers tilling soil under gentle artificially generated rain. Boyle is also bringing in “12 horses, three cows, two goats, 10 chickens, 10 ducks, nine geese, 70 sheep and three sheep dogs”. Evoking William Blake’s poem Jerusalem, Boyle is recreating “a green and pleasant land”.

Some cynical commentators have suggested, tongue-in-cheek, that a truer representation would depict mini-skirted young women vomiting after a night out binge drinking, youths knifing each other in gang fights and boarded up shops in recession-hit Britain.

The £9.3bn budget for the Games, which included a £2bn contingency, was set in 2007 and was almost four times the estimated cost at the time London bid in 2005. But that includes the expense of regeneration and converting the constructions into homes, offices, shops and restaurants for the local population after the Olympics are over. Also on the plus side, no one like Suresh Kalmadi has emerged and there have been few allegations about financial corruption.

Major challenges will include managing arrivals at Heathrow and getting spectators to the site. Already, bus crews demanding bonuses are threatening to go on strike.

But the real threat is from al-Qaeda and other terrorists. The day after Britain narrowly beat France to win the Olympics in Singapore on July 6, 2005, four home-grown suicide bombers devastated London, killing 52 and injuring more than 700. In readiness, missile batteries have been mounted on apartment blocks in east London and four Tornado fighter jets (the sort India is not buying) are deployed at RAF Northholt in north-west London.

MI5 director-general Jonathan Evans predicts a successful and memorable London Olympics but has warned: “A return to state-sponsored terrorism by Iran or its associates, such as Hezbollah, cannot be ruled out.”

Meanwhile, the world waits for the show to begin.