THE MAJOR TOPIC in sport these days is what will be the future of cricket, especially Test cricket as we know it. The game is undergoing a distinctly radical change, the second in its history.

In keeping with the fast pace of life today, cricket has little chance of making it as a truly global sport unless, of course,
it is made simpler to follow and is finished in duration of around four hours.

The Twenty20 franchise system launched in India a few months ago will eventually spread to major cricket areas
of Pakistan, South Africa, Australia and the West Indies and will change the face of cricket for decades to come.

Spectators are bored with the long-haul versions of the traditional game, something which even those in Asia and Australia have come to realise quite late. Being market savvy and with a big consumer industry base to support it, the officials in India have grabbed the opportunity to make a "quick dollar".

A shorter, more exciting and exact version – where certainty of result is not in doubt except for rain – has taken centre stage. This makes it very appealing to big markets in North America which Sir Allen Stanford is sure to exploit in future.

Twenty20 was born in England some four years back after the boring episodes of county cricket and it proved to be an instant hit there. Initially, India was the most reluctant player for this form of the game, but with a big "gullible" market looking for change, found the right catalyst when it won the inaugural 20/20 World Cup in South Africa last year.

This is what has made 20/20 the instant success today. The World Cup triumph saw one of the world's biggest "consumer nations" go straight into a long-term "love affair" with this version of the game.

Cricket has always struggled with the old format. According to Peter Roebuck, columnist in the Age Newspaper, "the problem has been that its most satisfying length has been its least marketable".

Originally seen as obscene and arrogant, the Twenty20 auctions and bidding for the world's best players, by some of the leading industrialists and Bollywood stars, turned out to be big hits. Cricket is the quickest and biggest money spinner in India outside new-trend products and movies.

Cricket purists have to accept this situation and cannot begrudge a group of smart marketers and businessmen who had the conceptual presence of mind. If some other country was in the same situation with so many citizens madly in love with the game, they would have done the same.

With cricket in decline, players' long-term earnings were in jeopardy. With Twenty20 cricket, there is no doubt that within a decade, the entire structure of the game could be changed beyond recognition.