Official boards should have vision to embrace Twenty20

On Cricket:The domestic season is heating up despite the inclement weather. The major senior events are reaching their latter stages, setting up some mouth-watering clashes over the next few weekends.

This Saturday, the Bob Kerr All-Ireland Senior Cup quarter-finals are played, two of the four being all-Leinster affairs - Malahide v The Hills and Railway Union v Phoenix.

The final of the Antalis Senior Cup will be between Clontarf and Merrion, the game to be held at Rathmines on July 28th.

And last Sunday the rains spoiled one of the most intriguing competitions on the calendar, the LHV Alan Murray Twenty20 Cup. The finals day for this event will be held at Park Avenue ground, home of Railway Union, on July 22nd .

The Leinster version of the competition is just one of many to have sprouted up across the cricketing world over the past year or so. In England, the County Championship is on hold as the Twenty20 tournament plays out to packed crowds.

This September the ICC holds the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa. (Ireland's absence is due to their disappointing World Cricket League performance at the start of the year).

The rapid growth of the Twenty20 format has been phenomenal.

A few years ago when editor of a sports magazine in London, I met a man called Stewart Robertson who worked for the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). He did a presentation on Twenty20 Cricket, then at the planning stage.

At the time I was sceptical about the idea. I thought it pandered to the lowest common denominator by turning cricket in to a highlights package of wickets, fours and sixes.

Some judge I turned out to be. The ECB launched Twenty20, which became a dirty great big hit, shaking up the image of the game, bringing in new people followed by much needed sponsor and TV money.

Two years later I, along with 27,000 other people, attended a Twenty20 game between Middlesex and Surrey at Lord's, the first time the old ground had sold out for a county match since 1953.

For years there were worries that the game at county level was dying, only watched by the old, the infirm and an assortment of strange looking men who held onto their shopping bags a bit too firmly.

To counter this problem the ECB were innovative and daring. They thought up a new approach and it worked, brilliantly.

Underlying this success are some concerns for cricket administrators such as ECB and ICC. One scenario sees the 20 over game eclipse the 50 over One Day International (ODI); by comparison, many one day games are dull and formulaic, despite recent introductions such as Powerplays.

Trends are emerging to illustrate this view. Darren Maddy, a journeyman pro from Leicestershire, is considered the most valuable player in county cricket, based on his performances in the 20 over version of the game. Teams of specialists are being developed. It is possible that cricket will split into two codes, like rugby union and league, working to different rules, generating a new set of personalities.

The key concern relates to money. Tests and ODIs bring in £75 million a year to the ECB, mainly from its Sky television deal. Likewise, the 50 over ICC Cricket World Cup is the international game's cash cow. The broadcast contracts for ICC events, including the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean were sold for a staggering $550 million. The next two have gone for over a billion dollars.

This money is ploughed back into developing cricket around the world, including Ireland.

But in the end it may not be the authorities that get to control the future.

That's the free market for you, once the genie is out of the bottle, he's a tricky little fella to get back in. Note how the iPod generation has told the music business where to stick its overpriced CDs.

If demand for Twenty20 goes untapped by the official boards, someone else, a sponsor or a media conglomerate, could step in to fill the gap.

My tip is to get along to watch the finals of the Irish version on July 22nd. You'll be part of a revolution.