In Bamber Gascoigne mode, allow me to give you a starter for ten: which team are second in the ICC Test Championship? OK, if you got India, here is your bonus question: by how many points do they trail Australia and when will the championship be decided? It is only a short distance from that ignorance - on my part as well as yours, I suspect - to asking the final question: how many people care?

After a raft of Twenty20 announcements this week, Test cricket has never felt more vulnerable. My opening gambit for this newspaper described the Twenty20 revolution as the greatest opportunity the sport has known. That remains the case. That cricket is awash with cash can only be good news, especially for the players who have long been the impoverished relations in sport. Good for cricket, too, because someone such as Phil Neville, equally good at football and cricket when he was young, would now pause for thought before deciding which sport to pursue as a career. There is a buzz about cricket.

But I also said that wise administrators were never more needed because there are inherent dangers posed by cricket's newest form, especially if it begins to dominate to the exclusion of everything else. Careful thought and planning, working out how best to preserve the old while embracing the new, are required. After what has happened this week, it is hard to have much confidence that the game is in good hands.

The impression was given not so much of careful planning but of chaos, of decisions made on the hoof with little or no consultation and scant regard for the long-term health of the sport.

At the start of the week I. S. Bindra, for example, soon to become the principal adviser to the ICC, talked of a desire to repackage Test cricket. Much of what he said had merit, but the message was drowned out by the news, on the same day, of a Champions League Twenty20 competition that would offer $5 million (about £2.5 million) to the winning team. No prizes for guessing what filled the sports pages.

Bindra, presumably, was talking with his ICC hat on. This is the first squeak of any note that we have heard from the game's rulers for a long time. Can you imagine any other governing body being so quiet and so ineffective while the structure and ethos of the game changes day by day? Cricket is reorganising itself along football lines, with clubs becoming as important as countries and player loyalty a thing of the past, and the ICC stands idly by.

Now take the Champions League and the chaos surrounding it. England were keen to promote it on the eve of this year's domestic Twenty20 competition, to give it a massive boost. Lalit Modi, the commissioner of the Indian Premier League (IPL), chief power-broker and king-maker of world cricket rolled into one, cautioned that it had only been agreed in principle. Like the man from Del Monte, it will only happen “when he say yes”.

Then there is the issue of those players who have featured in the Indian Cricket League (ICL), who have pariah status. Modi, using every tool available to him, is trying to blow the ICL out of the water and insists that no team who select ICL players will be eligible for the Champions League bonanza.

Cricket Australia, meanwhile, is charged with creating the rules and regulations for the Champions League, but while it dithers, English clubs had to decide who to pick for the Twenty20 Cup, which started yesterday. As it stands, we have the ludicrous situation that only a handful of counties are ICL-free. If Modi is as good as his word, either or both of the English teams who qualify for the Champions League by reaching the Twenty20 Cup final could be disqualified.

Now consider the status of those players who are available to play in the Champions League for more than one club. When the Champions League was first mooted, it was clearly stated that players would play for their state of origin. Now Modi insists that the IPL franchises who have signed big-name players for big money will have first pick.

Can it be right that Morne Morkel, produced by his home state in South Africa and nursed by them through injury, will play for Rajasthan Royals against the Titans in the Champions League? Or, closer to home, if Andrew Flintoff becomes a big-money signing for Mumbai Indians, can it be right that he would play for them against Lancashire, who produced him, nurtured him, protected him and continue to employ him?

Chaos was further in evidence when, at the conclusion of the third Test match between England and New Zealand at Trent Bridge, Giles Clarke, the chairman of the ECB, announced, in impromptu fashion, an injection of £2 million a year in win bonuses for the Test team. When, later, the ECB's media department was asked to clarify, there was a look of panic and ignorance. Clarke had jumped the gun, announcing something that was yet to be agreed with the England Player Partnership, probably because it had dawned on him how relatively impoverished the Test game looked.

And he is right, there is a massive financial imbalance between the long and short forms of the game. Clarke's announcement sounded all well and good. Now do the maths: £2 million divided by 12 players, say, divided by, on average, 75 days of Test cricket a year, and the result is a win bonus of a shade more than £2,000 per day of Test cricket. So, following the money, which would you rather do: a day of hard grind for £2,000, or a three-hour frenzy in Antigua on November 1 to become a dollar millionaire overnight?

If a non-contracted player is selected for England's first Test against South Africa next month, he will be paid a match salary of £6,000. That is for seven days' work. Now, it would be unjustifiable to describe any sport as back-breaking work, but there is no comparison between the physical and mental demands of Test cricket and those of Twenty20. It is called Test cricket for a reason. Given the rewards on offer, many may start to question whether the ultimate test is worth the hassle.

If the next generation of cricketers begins not to care, why should we? It would make me sad to see Test cricket wither because five-day matches between international teams have produced the greatest moments I can remember. Cricket would be a coarser, less subtle, less diverse game without it.

I am not a Test-match fascist and recognise that not everyone feels that way, and that people are free to choose their preference. But if the administrators continue to preach that Test cricket remains the ultimate, as they do, they need to be made aware that they are doing everything in their power to undermine it.

At the conclusion of England's victory over New Zealand, it was difficult to recall a Test series that had been more overshadowed. Certainly, there have been series swamped by interest in other things - the football World Cup, say. But I could not recall a series more dominated by other cricketing events. Michael Vaughan had barely finished brushing his lips across the silverware than the ECB was pumping up interest in the “original” Twenty20, as it likes to call it, and the Stanford millions.

Back to University Challenge, anyway, and another starter for ten: where are England and South Africa in the ICC Test Championship and how many points separate them? The answers are third and fourth respectively, and there is only one point between them. It should be a cracking Test series, and never has it been more needed.

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