Only those expecting the apocalypse could feel disappointed. Cricket, as we know it, did not end on a steamy evening in Bangalore. What happened, on this feverishly anticipated first night of the Indian Premier League, was the seamless transfer of a 21st century form of the game to its most natural habitat.

As revolutions go, it even felt a little tame, a little predictable. There was no great surprise in the full-house crowd of 55,000 and no discernible flaw in a fabulous opening ceremony. Unlike the flowering of floodlit cricket under Kerry Packer, 30 years ago, this was merely the feeding of an acknowledged crowdpleaser to a previously reluctant audience.

Not that there had ever been any sensible doubt that India would take to this fast-food cricket. This may still be the East but it is as voracious as any western appetite in its pursuit of glamour, celebrity and drama. Twenty20 cricket might have been invented for modern India, which makes it all the more mystifying that it took them so long to realise it.

Even the slick stage-management could not guarantee the right product on the field but if an innings to showcase the possibilities of Twenty20 had been imagined, it would have been the one played by Brendan McCullum.

The muscular New Zealander confessed later to being "very nervous" but you would not have known it. Having almost been run out without facing, by his skipper Sourav Ganguly, McCullum mocked the significantly shortened boundaries with an exhibition of clean hitting that brought endless gasps from the terraces.

To achieve serious recognition globally, the IPL needed its overseas players - with their headspinning salaries and the merest suspicion of take-the-money-and-run - to perform at least as well as the local Indian heroes. Looking like a toy spaceman, with metallic gold helmet and pads over his jet-black Kolkata Knight Riders kit, McCullum quickly sorted that one out.

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