When Mike Soper, the jolly-faced ex-chairman of Surrey, ran for the top job in the English game six years ago, he was ridiculed for predicting that cricket could become as popular as football. When the same sentiments were expressed last week in a Texan drawl by a multibillionaire, any sniggers were decidedly sotto voce. Allen Stanford's claims may yet prove to be drawn from the realms of fantasy, but there is no doubt that cricket has reached a decisive point in its history: the Twenty20 revolution comes with a health warning, but it also represents the greatest opportunity for cricket since Kerry Packer dragged the sport's administrators kicking and screaming into the 20th century.

The combination of a shorter, more popular form of the game, the economic powerhouse that is India and the free-market winds that have blown through the sport are creating an unstoppable force. I do not believe that when the Test-playing nations gave the thumbs-up to the Indian Premier League (IPL), much thought was given to the possible consequences. The administrators walked blindfolded into a storm; when the storm passes, the cricketing landscape is likely to look different.

Of course, the essence of cricket will not change; bowlers will still hurl a clump of leather towards batsmen 22 yards away. But many of the assumptions that underpin its structure and governance, the balance of power between players and administrators, the concept of domestic cricket as a mere feeder for the international game, the primacy of Test cricket and the viability and structure of English county cricket will all be challenged.

It is not that the IPL has been an unqualified success. Clearly the tournament will have to be tweaked as it evolves. It is too long; there are too many matches; there are too many modest players; many of the tickets have been given away, so it is not clear whether the fans have developed an emotional attachment to their clubs; and the franchise owners, like the stuffed shirts you see at an after-dinner auction, allowed their egos to dominate any business sense and overpaid massively for the franchises and the players. Yet, to set up such a tournament in less than a year is a remarkable achievement. Crucially for its future success, the players have taken to it wholeheartedly. This is not surprising when you consider the financial rewards on offer, but when, after the first match, Brendon McCullum, the New Zealander who scored 158 for the Kolkata Knight Riders, said that he could not feel his legs for the first eight balls he faced because of nerves, it was a good sign.

For sports fans are discerning enough to smell a fraud. They need to sense that it matters to players how they perform and whether they win or lose, which is why mere exhibition matches have never taken off. H.L. Mencken's dictum that you never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the public may work for daytime television producers and Hollywood directors, but not for sport. The players care, the public want it and on that basis alone Twenty20 is here to stay. It will drive the finances of domestic cricket the world over.

How, then, will it affect the sport? Geographically limited at the moment, the principles that underpin the IPL will surely spread, so that cricket will no longer be governed by well-meaning amateurs for whom the game was a passport to a free lunch and pleasant social life but instead will be run by hard-nosed businessmen for whom the only line is the bottom line.

Already, Justin Vaughan, the chief executive of New Zealand Cricket, has talked of looking into a franchise-based Australasia competition and there will be a beefed-up English Premier League, with private equity supplied by the likes of Stanford, from 2010 onwards.

Domestic Twenty20, then, will question two of the most fundamental principles that have underpinned the modern game; that is to say, domestic cricket will become important in its own right rather than as a mere feeder to the international game (like football and rugby, clubs will become as important as countries) and Test cricket will no longer be seen as the sport's defining product.

It is all very well for the likes of Ricky Ponting to say that Test cricket remains the ultimate. But what about the young boy in the Calcutta slum who sees Mahendra Singh Dhoni (Test average 34, one Test hundred) earning nearly four times as much in the IPL as Ponting (Test average 58, 34 Test hundreds.) At which format of the game will he want to excel?

When Stanford's $100million (about £50million) is up for grabs, at which form will a young England player want to excel, and if he has to make a choice, which will he choose? So far, Darren Gough is the only England player to retire from Test cricket to concentrate on one-day cricket. He will not be the last.

The era of player power is upon us. Packer helped cricketers to get a fair deal, but from now on it is administrators who will feel the pain. Last week Brad Hodge walked out on Lancashire to join the IPL. At the start of the year David Hussey and Shane Warne thought dollars and warmth more tempting than pounds and April cold. Nottinghamshire and Hampshire were left in the lurch, contracts ripped up and sent floating on the breeze. It is to be hoped that, with riches, players learn certain responsibilities.

As the IPL was gearing up, many thought that English cricket, like a Swiss canton during wartime, would go unaffected. But now it is clear that there will be consequences and the ECB is mulling over changes that will come into being in 2010.

Not much can happen next year, given the Ashes and the World Twenty20 tournament, but after that, and to coincide with a new television deal, all options are open. (A leading executive told me this week that “all sacred cows will be challenged”).

What is most likely is that the county championship will be reduced to about half the number of matches that are played now - complaints from the 100,000 or so county members drowned out by the 500,000 or so who watch Twenty20. It is the economic argument that will win the day. An English Premier League, with foreign teams, will dominate high summer and will be the first move away from the 18-county structure that has been the bedrock of English cricket for so long.

The ECB, though, is aware of the pulling power of Test cricket in this country and will try to market England as its natural home. Neutral Test matches, between predominantly Asian teams, will be played in England both to increase the value of television rights and as a way of exploiting the Asian market here.

To many, the increase in Twenty20 and the changes it will bring will be unpalatable. In this newspaper, William Rees-Mogg has bemoaned the death of cricket. I thought it ironic that his feelings were made plain on the same day that stuffy academics complained that the British Library was becoming too popular and overcrowded. Imagine that - people wanting to read books. People wanting to watch a form of the game that better suits their lifestyle. I disagree with His Moggship that the rustic origins of cricket at Hambledon were more in tune with Tests than Twenty20.

In any case, world cricket is not necessarily in good shape and these changes will give the administrators a perfect opportunity to take stock and re-evaluate. Crowds for Test cricket have been declining except in England and Australia. Domestic cricket is watched only in England. (When a pundit queried recently why Matthew Hayden crossed himself after making a hundred only in Test cricket, the reply came that not even God watches state cricket in Australia.) The ICC Champions Trophy is an irrelevance. The Future Tours Programme is a joke. The past two World Cups have been shambolic.

I accept that there are inherent dangers in the spread of a format that is, fundamentally, coarser; a spread of a game that could alienate the traditional fan base. A balance is essential.

It is time for wise administrators - those who can see the opportunities while smelling the dangers - to step forward. And wouldn't you just know it, at this defining moment in the game's history, cricket's governing body, the ICC, has never been more impotent, more divided or more derided. Right now, it does not even have a chief executive.

Warm farewell to CMJ

On another unseasonably cold evening, there will at least be much warmth emanating from the writing room in the pavilion tonight at Lord's, where this newspaper will be holding a “retirement” dinner for CMJ. No doubt some favourites will be trotted out, such as the time he held his television remote control to his ear for an age wondering why it was not giving him the required dial tone. Thankfully, his knowledge of the game is more acute than his understanding of the ways of modern life and this seems as good a place as any to wish him well and give thanks that his wisdom and deep love of the game will not be lost to us.

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