Cricket is in ferment again. It often is, but the first thing to understand about what we had better now call the Twenty20 Revolution is that it will not supersede Test cricket.

I keep reading that “cricket is the new football”. That is odd because that was what was being said in 2005, when the Ashes series was gripping a wider than usual proportion of the British public, just as last year's ICC World Twenty20 tournament in South Africa captivated much of India's vast population or the explosive fast bowling of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson enthused Australians, among them Kerry Packer, in 1974-75.

Cricket's popularity ebbs and flows, like the game itself, but it keeps flowing. Not because it is the new football, but because it is the old cricket, a series of duels between a batsman and a bowler in a team context and varying conditions, a game demanding as much skill, fitness and courage as most others and greater discipline, technique and intelligence than any.

In 1900 cricket was “in the very direst peril of degenerating from the finest of all summer games into an exhibition of dullness and weariness”, according to the great Victorian all-rounder, A.G. Steel, after two hot seasons in which batsmen had had things too much their own way and there were too many draws. Historians now call the era to which he was referring the Golden Age.

It is not dullness and weariness that traditionalists are worried about now, but glitz and superficial razzmatazz: a boiled-down version of a profound game that is hauling in television advertisers, not to mention easily pleased spectators, in the land where passion for the game knows no bounds. The consequences are that more than just a few leading players are becoming millionaires, that the bash, dash and dazzle version of cricket is getting wide exposure, but that at the same time the game is in danger of losing its balance, both in India and farther afield.

But the glass is more than half-full. The advent of the Twenty20 leagues is an historic landmark for professional cricket and a great opportunity for the sport's further expansion, so long as the leading administrators - and players more powerful than ever before - show restraint. Cricket cannot live by Twenty20 alone, because the game's skills and tactics have to be learnt in a harder school.

That said, it worked here first and it may be the future of one-day cricket in Britain. In Giles Clarke, the ECB has the right chairman at the right time. In Sir Allen Stanford, by providence, it also has the right billionaire at the right time. He and the board are agreed about an annual challenge match between West Indies and England in Antigua and a quick tournament - two semi-finals and a final - played by England, West Indies and two other countries every September in England, with some but not all matches at Lord's.

The idea is also to add three overseas teams to a Twenty20 domestic tournament in the middle of every season, with extra commercial sponsorship, but although I would not want to watch Twenty20 every week, I can see its great attraction and I would be more radical.

I suggest three competitions: the County Championship, the bedrock; one 50-over tournament, starting as a league, leading to quarter-finals and semi-finals and a Lord's final; and a regular weekend Twenty20 league, allowing each club a home game every fortnight. For television, that would mean a couple of big matches each weekend to rival football's Premier League; for most clubs, it would guarantee mean ample television and gate revenue; for players, a four-day game in most but not all weeks and a high-profile one-day match each weekend.

This is, after all, just the latest shift in a sport that has always mirrored social trends. Packer's cricket in coloured clothes was innovative, it seemed, but they had played in coloured kit, albeit rather more tasteful, in the 18th century. Nor were 20-overs-a-side matches anything new when they were presented in fresh new clothes by the counties five years ago. I played them on summer evenings in the 1960s. It was just as much fun: matches were always vital and competitive.

Even the marketing of the game is old. William Clarke, of Nottingham, was every bit as much an entrepreneur with his touring England XIs in the 1840s as Lalit Modi is in 2008. As for gambling, it is as old as “big match” cricket itself. Indira Singh Bindra, the Indian administrator whose sense of responsibility will be crucial in his new role as “principal adviser” to an ever more politically hidebound ICC, estimates that the amount of money wagered on the Indian Premier League (IPL) when it has reached the end of its long and fevered first round will have been about £90billion.

But a contemporary report said that “near £20,000 is depending” on bets associated with the Earl of Sandwich's matches at Newmarket in 1751 between “Old Etonians” and “England”. The prize-money was £1,500. Today that is worth £225,000. Plus ça change.

Provided that there is no corruption - and history tells that there has to be careful player education and supervision to prevent it - the fresh injection of money into the game will be good, not only for the lucky few players in the right place at the right time, but also for its expansion into new areas of the world, particularly the largely untapped “markets” - of China and the United States.

But I fear that, like any sport adapted for television, Twenty20 cricket will be overdone. It is all a question of balance. Some games will be exciting, some boring. People will need to care who wins if the IPL franchise concept is to succeed in the long term, and if it is to be given a window in the international programme it will have to be for three weeks only, not six. One of the virtues of the World Twenty20 tournament in South Africa in September last year was its brevity.

The ECB can lecture no one about overindulgence because there have been too many competitions in England and Wales and the national team play too much. Assuming the Stanford deals are signed, it will be able to take tough decisions that will preserve counties as the only practical bridge between the amateur and professional game.

Australia’s system is superior without doubt as a means of developing players fit for excellence in international cricket, but their population is a third that of Britain’s, so having three times as many professional clubs is logical. With salary caps, still greater incentives for fielding a higher proportion of England-qualified players and profits from international cricket shared only on condition that even more money is spent on local clubs and schools, the counties can fulfil their main function. That four-day cricket does not make money is irrelevant; that is not its main purpose.

The chief critics of county cricket are those who do not watch it. Standards are high in the intensely competitive four-day championship; players such as Alastair Cook and Ryan Sidebottom have moved seamlessly into Test cricket because they are better prepared for the step up than they once were; it is comfortably the best-watched domestic competition in the world. Millions still follow it voraciously online: witness the 26million page hits for county cricket on Cricinfo - only one of many sources - in 2007, and in any newspaper enlightened enough to appreciate how many want proper reports.

Do not panic. In the literal sense, at least, we are in the early stages of another golden age. By its nature, cricket is a golden game, not the simplest but certainly the best devised by man. Only if it is viewed solely as a means of making gold will it cease to captivate the young, and enthusing the next generation is the prime responsibility of players and administrators. Whether or not they are succeeding is the true test of the game's health.

Christopher Martin-Jenkins will continue to contribute regularly to The Times after stepping down from his role as Chief Cricket Correspondent.

CMJ's favourites

Best match on a good pitch England v India, Lord's, 1990 (Graham Gooch 333 and 123, Mohammad Azharuddin 121, Kapil Dev four sixes in succession to save follow-on)

Best match on a sporty pitch Melbourne, 1974: England 242 and 244, Australia 241 and 238 for eight

Best one-day game World Cup semi-final, South Africa v Australia at Edgbaston, 1999: Allan Donald run out in final over, match tied

Best series England v Australia, 2005

Best innings Lawrence Rowe, 302, West Indies v England, Bridgetown, 1974

Best bowling Ian Botham, eight for 34 v Pakistan, Lord's, 1978

Best batsman Viv Richards

Best bowler Shane Warne

Best fielder Paul Parker

Best captain Raymond Illingworth

Best umpire H.D. Bird

Best grounds; England: Lord's; Trent Bridge; Worcester; Horsham. Australia: Adelaide Oval; Sydney Cricket Ground. India: Eden Gardens. South Africa: Newlands. Pakistan: Bagh-e-Jinnah, Lahore. West Indies: Kensington Oval, Barbados. New Zealand: Seddon Park, Hamilton; Pukekura Park, New Plymouth. Sri Lanka: Asgiriya Stadium, Kandy

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