[Langeveldt]

Originally Posted by SJS

MICHAEL ATHERTON

Fifty and 40-over cricket have already felt the pinch - they become even less attractive to sponsors now - and this will be exaggerated. County staffs may well be positioned with Twenty20 primarily in mind. Star players may be rested from first-class games in order to be fit and ready for the Twenty20 tournament. Suddenly Twenty20 starts to look like a threat to the primacy of the championship. Will a county be more interested in producing Test players for England, or winning a share of a $5 million pot? It doesn't take much of a clairvoyant to see the potential threat to the traditional forms of the game.

As an enthusiastic supporter of Twenty20 from its inception, the success it has generated in such a short time in revitalising domestic cricket has been heartening. But I have always felt that Twenty20 should have remained just that - a vehicle to revive domestic cricket. Fifty-over cricket and obviously Test cricket, remain vital to protecting the very essence of the game, which is a contest between batsmen and bowlers, bat and ball. Twenty20 is the equivalent of the gas chamber for a bowler. If the game's future evolves entirely around Twenty20, why would any young, talented cricketer want to become one?

The recently disgraced Shoaib Akhtar might have overstated his case when he slammed the game's administrators for making it into a batsman's game, but he had a point.

Now that Twenty20 has spread to the international arena, its effects could be more wide ranging than either I, or, I suspect, its creators would wish. It is hard to see a future for 50-over cricket and if, as I do, you still love the slower rhythm and sub-plots of Test cricket, you might fear for that, too.

Completely agree with him, what a guy