In affectionate remembrance of the hope that the England cricket team would soon win a global one-day tournament, which died, at home, on April 18, 2008, while the rest of the world celebrated the birth of the Indian Premier League at the Chinnaswamy stadium, Bangalore. The health of the team itself had been undermined by the loss of grave quantities of money offered by a circle of Indian friends. The body will be cremated and the ashes scattered on the Ganges. - with apologies to Reginald Shirley Brooks, The Times, 1882

Twenty20 cricket may be set to take over the world but its unstoppable rise has been met with what may prove fatal resistance inside the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), the very body that created this irresistibly contemporary format of the game.

Twelve years ago, England’s chronically outmoded approach to 50-over cricket at the World Cup that spawned pinch-hitting was likened to a bad-tempered grandmother attending a rave. Well, English cricket is once again casting itself in the role of the grumpy grandmother, only now she prefers to stay at home altogether rather than watch the youngsters having a good time at various venues around India.

Even at this early stage of the elite Indian Premier League (IPL), which for concentrated global talent eclipses the county championship of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the ECB’s decision to discourage its players from taking part is increasingly looking like a catastrophic blunder.

While England’s principal stars were confined to home, Brendon McCullum was demon-strating how fast this format is evolving – and what extraordinary things can be done if the mind is put to it. McCullum’s astonishing display of batting in Bangalore on Friday night was reminiscent of the kind of blitzkriegs executed in their pomp by Adam Gilchrist and Sanath Jayasuriya – the two men most associated with that kind of batting – but was actually superior in its purity and planning. It may not be too big a statement to say that he took power-batting to a new level. The IPL could not have asked for a better first night.

Twenty overs may not be long but McCullum, who regularly murdered the bowling in one-day matches during England’s recent tour of New Zealand, showed how even such a short innings can be broken down into phases and paced. Of his 158 runs, 91 came during explosive bursts in the first and last four overs of the innings, while the 12 overs between saw him adopting a more measured approach. This, of course, reflects what happens in a 50-overs innings, only McCullum’s scoring during the middle period was at a different rate from that traditionally seen in one-day internationals.

He managed it with breathtaking improvisation, sublimely timing a chip over fine leg for six and scooping a ball over his own head, and that of the keeper’s, for four. Within the first two hours of a 45-day tournament, the New Zealander had proved that Indian crowds were willing to cheer a foreigner who was hitting Indian bowling into the stands.

The IPL may well not live up to its dazzlingly audacious launch – after all, it is almost as protracted as the 2007 World Cup, of which everyone grew tired, and attendances may well disappoint some franchise owners – but six weeks of concentrated Twenty20 could have an eye-opening effect on the way not only 20-over matches are played, but also 50-over ones and even Test matches.

Even before this tournament, McCullum was cross-fertilising his methods, as he showed during the recent Test series against England, when he sometimes played in essentially one-day mode. What will he take to England next month out of his batting in the IPL? It is easy to say that what he did in Bangalore on Friday will not translate to a Lord’s Test in May, but we must wait and see.

Technical discoveries are one thing that the IPL can teach; another is learning to cope with the pressures of playing in front of massive audiences for huge wages. If McCullum was feeling so nervous when he started his innings that he could not feel his legs, who can blame him?

More than one billion people would have been watching on TV and he is being paid £60,000 per week. Pride demanded something of him.

What effect all of this will have on how the game is played at the Champions Trophy in September, the Twenty20 world championship in England next year, or the 2011 World Cup, is not yet clear, but it is fair to assume that the IPL cricketers stand at the foot of one of life’s steeper learning curves. It would be truly amazing if, 15 months from now, the conclusion was that England’s cricketers were given an advantage by staying at home rather than being here.

While they watch others hone their talents for clearing the rope, yesterday in Mohali it was the turn of Australians Mike Hussey and James Hopes who respectively scored 114 and 71 at rates comparable to McCullum’s. The price other countries may pay for their big wages is India feeling the on-field benefits more than they will.

The ECB had its reasons for keeping its players away. Much-needed rest was one, and it is hard to dispute that many top performers need more recuperation than they get. Australia captain Ricky Ponting, for one, looks like a man on the edge of burn-out and his mood will not have been lightened by being booed on his first appearance here.

There is a belief that the autumn might have been a better time for England’s break. There is so much to learn from such a unique event as the IPL. When teams of top-class players are assembled, tradecraft is shared and everyone is naturally hungry to pit his wits against the best. Fears that they will not be fully motivated are groundless, just as they were for Kerry Packer’s signatories. No cricket was ever tougher than that.

So think what Ravi Bopara, Luke Wright, Phil Mustard and Owais Shah might have learnt about batting from playing the first three weeks here; and what James Anderson and Stuart Broad might have learnt from working alongside Glenn McGrath or Shaun Pollock.

The nearer we got to the beginning of the IPL, the weaker the ECB’s position became. With the starter’s gun raised, the board finally conceded that England players might be briefly free to appear in the IPL in 2009.

The board explained that Peter Moores, the England coach, might want to use the IPL to prepare players for the world Twenty20. If so, might he not also have wanted them to play this year, particularly as the opportunity in 2009 is unlikely to be more than two weeks. Surely far too little, far too late. Enough, perhaps, however, to prevent any England star from refusing to sign new 12-month contracts come September.

The ECB hopes that by 2010 its players can play a fuller part in the IPL season, but they could be a long way behind the latest techniques by then. England’s senior players may have grasped this point, and might not have been thinking simply of the money when they said they thought that they should be allowed to take part.

Talk about England becoming the first country to accede to Allen Stanford’s request to play a one-off Twenty20 match for a winner-takes-all prize of £10m is, in cricketing terms, largely irrelevant, even if held annually, save for practice at playing under extreme pressure. But win or lose, this contest could do England more harm than good. Winning nearly £1m per man could derail motivations ahead of the Ashes, while losing could destroy team spirit.

The ECB has justified its cautious response to the IPL by saying that it wanted to avoid knee-jerk reactions, but entertaining the Stanford match looks every bit that. Before long, the ECB, which has arranged 20 Tests and nearly 40 one-day internationals in the next 18 months, will real-ise their top players need more exposure to Twenty20 cricket. It thinks the planned Champions League, for the world’s best club sides, will help, but that remains unlikely to start before September 2009 with no broadcaster or sponsor signed up.

The ECB argues, fairly enough, that Test cricket remains the bread and butter of the game in England, but it must shed the old-fashioned view that it is the only arena in which skills are developed. Gilchrist, Jayasuriya, McCullum, Hussey and Virender Sehwag have long shown that skills are transferrable from one forum to another.