Twenty20 gaining more exposure …

THE last thing to be pencilled into the Australia one-day tour of India -- which begins this week -- was the Twenty20 fixture at Mumbai's elegant Brabourne Stadium.

If events of the past few weeks are any guide, there may come a time when one of those boring-as-the-day-is-long 50-over matches is pencilled in at the last minute. Maybe, in a moment of nostalgic hysteria, a Test or two.

When it comes to Twenty20, everybody is going at breakneck speed,The English counties have been playing it for four years.

Australia has had a domestic competition for the past two seasons and Cricket Australia had detected a massive Generation Y spike in attendances at the new form, but on the subcontinent Twenty20 was discouraged.

Historically, India has been a bit of a slow starter when it comes to new forms, but like religious converts, the Indians attach themselves with fanatical zeal once they have made the decision to change.

In 1979, Australia spent three long months on the subcontinent. The team played six Tests but not a single one-day match. This was four years after the first World Cup of cricket and four years before India would hold that cup aloft in 1983.

Since that time, the one-day match has taken such a tight hold on the subcontinent that many believe it has undermined the Indians' ability to play the five-day game.

Sated by the 50-over form, the last incarnation of the Board of Control for Cricket in India treated Twenty20 with disdain.

However, the ascension of new president Sharad Pawar and, more importantly, billionaire businessman and former television executive Lalit Modi, who took up the marketing director position, ushered in a new era.

Modi knew that the cashed up Indian television networks wanted more product and they would take all they were given and still want more. In 1996, while working for the private sector, he had tried to sell the idea of a privatised league but had been chased out of town by the board.

Cricket Australia's chief executive James Sutherland and chairman Creagh O'Connor were the first to knock on the door when the new BCCI board took office. Sutherland was ahead of the game on Twenty20 and sniffed an opportunity some time back.

It was the perfect vehicle to bring crowds back to domestic cricket, but more importantly he saw that it could be tied into an international play-off.

Television and venues would have product that people liked and it could be aired between the end of football and the traditional start of summer. The paper was distributed among the international cricket boards but appeared to be dead batted by the BCCI under the old administration.

Cricket Australia had worked assiduously to court the new Indian board. Last year, the Australians managed the DLF Cup in Malaysia between India, West Indies and Australia. At the time, India needed more international cricket to fulfil a television deal which landed the BCCI $US1billion for five years of one-day internationals.

The subcontinent provided the muscle and attracted the cash and a team from Cricket Australia provided the logistics and management. Everybody walked away considerably richer.

This year, the Australians have been back knocking on the doors in India. O'Connor and Sutherland made a quiet trip to suggest maybe there was something in this Twenty20 notion.

The Twenty20 Champions League was born with England and South Africa invited to compete in the first year with teams from the new Indian Premier League.

This week the BCCI said it was expecting to charge around $70million per new team that enters its Premier League competition, and further funding would come from the sale of ground rights. The sale of television rights is going to bring a massive windfall to all parties.

A week later the new format is gaining more attention than cricket has generated for decades. Already there is talk of including it in the next Asian Games.