Good cricket? Oh no it's not!

It is difficult to tell whether it was too late for the cricket season or too early for the pantomime season. Either way, it is fair to say that the attempt to stage indoor cricket in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff at the weekend was not an unqualified success. It is all very well to hire some of the biggest names in cricket to pack the Rest of the World team, give the England team the ugly label of "The Brits," get Sky TV to cover it and offer prize money equivalent to winning the World Cup, but if it is perceived as nothing more than a gimmick, it will not work.

The organisers claim that 11,000 spectators attended over Friday and Saturday evenings, but how many of these were paying spectators is not known. There is usually a fair degree of "papering the house" at such events, to borrow a theatrical expression. In a stadium that holds 73,000, the lack of an audience stripped the occasion of any meaningful atmosphere.

The television commentators strove manfully to take it seriously, even offering comments suggesting that had the architects made the playing area just a little bigger by having the lower tier of seating retractable to give longer boundaries and claiming that there would still have been room for a decent crowd. On this evidence, it would have been possible to retract all the seating bar a few rows at the top and the crowd could still have been accommodated and the playing surface could have been bigger than the MCG.

Those same commentators were wired to selected players out in the middle. Not many of the comments from the players were particularly illuminating while James Foster nearly suffered another injury when diving behind the stumps and landing on his battery pack. If Duncan Fletcher was watching, he must have winced every time one of his Ashes party were involved in the action. As for David Fulton, he was out to the very next ball after David Lloyd had asked him a question from the commentary box. No wonder Lloyd said he felt a bit responsible.

One of the perimeter advertising boards was for HM Prison Service. Perhaps that was an opportunity to wheel out cricket's best-known inmate, Lord Archer, as an umpire. It would have been in keeping to list him as Geoffrey rather than Jeffrey Archer had they done so, because Andy Flower had the name "Flowers" on his back, Matthew Fleming was "Flemming" while Nathan Astle was announced over the public address system as "Jeff Astle." Perhaps the late West Brom and England centre-forward had made an impact in Cardiff in his playing days.

The idea of giving bonus runs depending on which tier of seating was located by big hits did not really add to the entertainment factor, while only one player, Shahid Afridi, hit a maximum 12. He hit the roof, but Astle - be it Nathan or Jeff - was the only batsman to reach the top tier and record a ten.

No doubt buoyed by the prospect of sizeable pay cheques, the players were entering into the spirit of the occasion, albeit as they would a benefit or exhibition match. Dominic Cork even tried to give Saeed Anwar a stare. The batsman simply laughed at him, reducing Cork to all the threat of a pantomime villain. "How's that?" "He's not out." "Oh yes he is!" would have completed the surreal exchange.

For the record, the Rest of the World won the first match by seven wickets and the second by two runs. The organisers claimed they were pleased with the inaugural event. That suggests there will be more, but surely gimmicks have a limited life? It will never take the place of cricket.