Scream until you like it

I was planning a giant screed on the IPL, T20 cricket, the continual carping about it in the English press and the air of barely suppressed celebration at the suspension of Lalit Modi, but then the clouds cleared and I realised - it doesn't matter.

There are only a few sayable things about the IPL: The grounds are full. It's played ferociously, with intensity. It makes lots of money.

As a rapidly expanding, billion-dollar business, there may have been some sharp practice. What a shock. Something like that would be unheard of in a respectable, properly administrated arena like say, English banking.

Here's the truth: Modi and the IPL are a force majeure, a deus ex machina even, on the scale of Kerry Packer. They have repositioned the game, so get used to it.

Another truth: it's not Test cricket that T20 will harm. Test cricket must fight its own separate battle with the future. But it has finished the 50 over game. That's a dead man walking right there.

All the rest is just detail.

NB: I really like Shane Warne's deconstruction [below], bad spelling and all. The ideas on player retention and super rounds are very shrewd. Better than the ECB, isn't he...