SIX DAYS ago in Cardiff the Leicestershire captain, Jeremy Snape, faced a dilemma. His team had been bossing their four-day county championship match with Glamorgan, but the final afternoon called for the kill. The only question was: when to declare? “There was a tiny leg-side boundary, so we were all wondering what was acceptable to offer them after being in charge for the whole game,” says Snape. “Glamorgan’s batsmen had all played Twenty20 so we decided to set them 340 in 48 overs. It might have been a bit conservative, but Twenty20 had just finished and Brendon McCullum, who had scored 160 in their first innings, had been signed specifically to play in the competition.”

Glamorgan finished on 154 for seven and Snape’s caution was not well received, but something of wider significance was at work. When eight of the country’s less fashionable teams contest tomorrow evening’s Twenty20 Cup quarter-finals — Kent are the only side from the top six of the county championship to have qualified — they will be playing a game that has moved imperceptibly in the players’ minds from laughing-stock to tactical touchstone.

Hit-and-giggle has given way to plan-and-think, and the repercussions are being felt beyond the realms of a competition that packed out venues during the group stages in the early part of July.

“Twenty20 has changed perceptions of what’s acceptable in runchases,” says Snape, who famously decoded Adam Hollioake’s slower ball during the final against Surrey in 2004 and tomorrow leads Leicestershire against Kent as they go in search of what would be a unique fourth successive appearance on finals day.

“Players have become much better at managing risk,” he says. “They’re hitting boundaries and accumulating twos with fewer problems. No longer is six an over out of the question, as it might once have been in 50-over cricket. It would have to be 10-plus to get you worried.”

Mark Ramprakash, whose Surrey side travel to Bristol to face Gloucestershire, has also sensed a greater appetite for run-chasing. “There’s no doubt in my opinion that people are chasing targets better in four-day cricket,” he says. “Teams aren’t getting fazed by the prospect of seven or eight an over — they’re dealing with the pressure better and that might well have something to do with Twenty20.”

The format has even allowed some batsmen to explore potential they didn’t realise they had. Chris Taylor of Gloucestershire averages under 30 in the Second Division of the championship and was dropped for the current game against Worcestershire. But in the group stages of the Twenty20 he thrashed 277 runs at a strike-rate of 176.

“You can express yourself and play more freely,” he says. “I know that’s benefited a lot of the batters. There’s no tension. It comes down to basic instincts. It’s definitely helped me — there are far fewer thought processes.

“The main thing is being able to take the confidence and positivity from the middle into other forms of cricket. I played in one championship match against Essex after Twenty20 and made only nine and 30, but I definitely tried to apply the positivity I had picked up.”

Nottinghamshire host Northamptonshire tomorrow, and their coach Mick Newell believes Twenty20 has opened up new possibilities in batsmen’s minds. “People such as Chris Read and Mark Ealham are pretty effective in the 50-over game anyway, but Twenty20 has freed them up to hit even more cleanly,” he says. “They’ve come to the conclusion that almost any ball can be hit for six, with the exception of a fast yorker.”

Yet Twenty20 has not merely been a case of batsmen working out new ways of tormenting bowlers (the average first-innings score this season — 165 — was only two runs higher than in 2005). In fact, Leicestershire have been pioneering a method that subverts the traditional idea of batsmen manoeuvring the bowlers.

“Some bowlers have developed the ability to get batsmen off strike if they are playing really well,” says their Kolpak import Hylton Ackerman. “It’s easier for a spinner to do it than a seamer, but sometimes the worst delivery can be the best one, like a long hop outside off-stump that gets panned for a single to the sweeper. Then you get to squeeze in a few dot balls to the new batsman.”

The idea of deliberately conceding runs might be the last straw for the traditionalists, but Snape, one of the few bowlers in the country to have given away less than a run a ball in the group matches, backs up Ackerman. “If you bowl a couple of dots at a guy, you might want to give him a single because he might be getting used to your rhythm,” he says. “You want the other guy on strike. Four singles an over are better than five dot balls followed by a six.”

Twenty20 began life as a bit of fun back in 2003, but many players now regard it as more important than the Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy, previously the most-prized domestic one-day competition. “At first it was a festival game,” says Snape. “People played it like a benefit. But now it’s become the central hub of the season. You put so much effort and enthusiasm into it that it can actually fuel the second half of the summer. It’s very cleverly placed in that respect.”

The idea that the public cares is also one that appeals to cricketers used to plying their trade in front of a few hundred spectators. “The players generally want to play in front of bigger crowds,” says Snape. “Finals day is now the highest-profile day they will play in.”

Just as pertinently, Twenty20 is changing the county pro’s outlook on the game. At one level, the changes are immediately obvious: the reverse-sweep, most notably, is no longer viewed as a surprise tactic. At another, the changes are more fundamental. Snape, who has just completed a Masters degree in sports psychology, says: “Players are much more self-aware, which is great for the game. If you can take that into championship cricket, then so much the better. Adaptation is the key.” The adaptation might have only just begun.