ECB's monster

The England and Wales Cricket Board created Twenty20 five years ago, to widespread acclaim and profit. But those by-products now threaten to destabilise a game several centuries in the making, a situation the ECB can perhaps best serve by shackling the thing it loves.

Twenty20 is undoubtedly a hot product but the frightening thing for people who prefer progress and change to be considered and gradual is that eight months ago only one of those competitions existed - the Twenty20 Cup. The indecent haste to fill those gaps that still exist in the itinerary seems driven by the need for a fast buck, which in turn suggests that the product is a fad and not especially robust. As some sage pointed out recently, cricket needs to make money to exist but should not exist simply in order to make money.