Even if you only happen upon just a tiny slice of the World Cup story, maybe as you observe sweating workmen slog away at the Eden Gardens, you know what a humongous enterprise it is. All for 50-over games. And then you probably recall that the Marylebone Cricket Club panel packed with such big names as Mike Gatting and Justin Langer had very recently said it would rather bilateral One-Day Internationals could be cut down so more space could be wrung out of the congested global cricketing calendar for players with a relish for Twenty20 to find more leagues to play. It is for you to decide if it’s going to be a situation akin to the cat is gone but its grin lingers. But well might Alice have stopped and stared at Wanindu Hasaranga of Sri Lanka even in the wonderland for T20s they were conjuring up given the allrounder had told his board he’d rather get out of Tests and into the franchisee game.

The 26-year-old had made his Test debut in December 2020 against South Africa and then managed no more than four subsequent appearances in the conventional game, which underlined no great loss but indicated how he could make his pile without trying to get better as a cricketer. And Ben Stokes’ return is only tactical for his team’s Cup prospects. Hasaranga, of course, is not alone in the popular contemporary pursuit of T20 millions among cricketers, with the world having already been told with authentic details of franchises, mostly Indian, replacing national cricket boards in the none too distant future as the primary employers of players. The big boys in the gold rush can eat their cake and have it too. Jason Roy says he prioritises playing for his country even after giving up his incremental contract with the England and Wales Cricket Board to join the USA’s Major League Cricket, where he is to pocket 300,000 pounds for the tournament’s first two seasons, one of these completed already. But the conflicting interests in this instance ended in a deftly controlled truce with the ECB left rolling entirely in the mire, which is a lot more than you can say about a situation unfolding catastrophically in South Africa. The T20 competition the Proteas started last season, with Indians owning all the teams, clashed with a Test series against New Zealand with it being made quite clear that the best players would be in the cash-cow competition, steering clear of the country’s international commitment. Graeme Smith has taken the side of T20, which is making money all right, firmly asserting the predictable party-line to justify how the rule-book has been altered for the new age. Time was when he was the Proteas’ Test captain, and a very good one too but that changed and so did the game’s rules.

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