Pandora’s Box will be officially opened in Antigua on Saturday morning when the Stanford Super Series starts. It remains to be seen whether world cricket will benefit from the power of Twenty20 or devour itself in the mad scramble for the riches.
The Super Series pits the Stanford Superstars against England in a tournament that also features Middlesex and Trinidad and Tobago, while the winners of the Superstars and England match on November 1 will take home $20-million.
That is the biggest prize in a cricket match and Twenty20 continues to throw up other telling numbers.
The mood at SuperSport Park this week was not surprising when the Titans launched their involvement in the Champions League. There was anticipation and a little bemusement at how big those numbers are.
The Titans and the KwaZulu-Natal Dolphins will join the top two teams from the Indian Premier League and the Australian Twenty20 to battle over a $6-million purse.
Cricket South Africa has decided that the money won in India will be distributed among all six franchises.
It seems crazy and unfair on the players who qualified by making the final of the Standard Bank Pro20 competition. But with power and money comes great responsibility, and Cricket South Africa is trying to ensure Twenty20 benefits the game as a whole.
Allowing certain franchises to accumulate disproportionate wealth cannot be good for the game.
But the most telling number is $70-million. It proves that Test cricket is under attack from Twenty20 or, more precisely, the premier league.
That is the money Sri Lanka cricket are willing to sell themselves for, offering an unconditional pledge of loyalty to the premier league and the Champions League for the next 10 years.
So those Indian tournaments will be the priority of Sri Lanka’s cricketers.
Their Test tour of England next April is an early casualty. Test matches are what international cricket has been based on for more than 130 years.
Is it an affordable casualty as countries fall over and subjugate themselves to India and its new toy?
And what a shiny new toy it is — the television rights for the Champions League have been sold for $1-billion, which works out as $7,5-million a match. The Board of Control for Cricket in India’s power is ballooning.
It posted earnings of 10-billion rupees last year, roughly $200-million at the current exchange rate, a 75% increase from the previous year.
But that shiny new toy is no play-thing, it is a dangerous weapon of mass destruction.
And the board is pointing it at the Indian Cricket League to ensure that there are no rivals. That league includes South Africans Nicky Boje, Lance Klusener, Johan van der Wath and Andrew Hall. It wants to be recognised by the International Cricket Council and be officially sanctioned, instead of its players being banned and treated as outcasts.
But will it be taken seriously when the International Cricket Council sub-committee, debating officially sanctioned cricket, contains two of the prime movers in the premier league, Lalit Modi and Shashank Manohar?
Even a much-vaunted meeting between the board and the Indian Cricket League was a farce as it was over in 15 minutes, thanks to caustic comments that the league should close its operations before negotiations take place.
Such greed will cost cricket its very soul, no matter how glittering the riches look.