There was heavy irony in the leaking yesterday of the document outlining the would-be birth of “New Twenty20 Ltd”. Its bullet points, numerous as the cartridges in a Mexican bandit’s rifle, proclaimed a brave new world just as the old one was looking and feeling as comfortable as a well-upholstered armchair. The details were passed from BBC radio to the press box on a sunny morning at Lord’s during which 29,000 cricket lovers, filling the immaculate ground to capacity on a working day, despite the recession in the economy, were revelling in the batsmanship of Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen.

This was glorious cricket for its quality and its context: a five-day Test match made into a great occasion to a large extent by the tradition that lies behind it. When cricket is as attractive and popular as this, what need do we have, in England of all places, of gaudy new entertainment? Not even the devotees of Test cricket — and they have diminished in other parts of the world — would deny the attraction of Twenty20 cricket, but only the greedy would believe that its tinselly pleasures will quickly cloy if they are displayed too often.

Whether the proposed new tournament would bring even more profits to counties already doing very nicely from the Twenty20 format that was pioneered in England five years before India’s franchise version hiked the stakes enormously may be another matter, but we surely do not need more than the volume that we already have. On the contrary, this year’s increased programme of ten matches per county over 2½ weeks of hectic activity was already overegging the pudding.

Now it is suggested that regular Friday-night Twenty20 matches for the counties (not a bad idea in itself) would be “augmented” by what is more or less a carbon copy of the Indian Premier League, in its English version comprising 54 games over 25 days of midsummer. In this way they will further push Test cricket and the four-day County Championship to the beginning and end of the season. Yet without the arts learnt in the longer form of the game, so compellingly on display at Lord’s yesterday, the instant version would have no allure.

“It’s really exciting, will bring a huge amount of money to the game, will support all 18 counties and the grass roots of the game,” Paul Sheldon, the Surrey chief executive who is one of its principal exponents, said yesterday. Whatever the truth, however, of this discussion document that was brought forward primarily by Sheldon, Rod Bransgrove of Hampshire, Jim Cumbes of Lancashire and Keith Bradshaw of MCC, the effect of its implementation would be to make the rich richer. That means that the already-wealthy players and the rich cricket grounds would be the prime beneficiaries. It is naive, even on the part of hard-headed businessmen, to claim that the usual corollary will not apply.

It would take a mighty leap of faith by the nine first-class counties whose grounds do not measure up to the ECB’s Category-A status to accept that they would not be in many ways the poorer. The fact is that the more high-profile, heavily hyped cricket that is played in England and Wales, the harder it is for domestic clubs who are left out in the cold to survive as viable businesses in their own right. They will become even more dependent on handouts from the centre. The more they rely on income generated by others, and the more that they try to compete with wealthier rivals, the less defensible becomes their main theoretical function, namely to generate young cricketers capable of playing for England.

The proposers of “New” Twenty20 know that there are willing would-be investors, including companies and rich individuals from overseas. They are not fools and they certainly do not want to undermine Test cricket, but they take too little notice of the danger of overkill. There are only so many good players; only so much cricket that they can play without getting sated. Nor is television income, on which the whole edifice would be built, inexhaustible. There would be other bidders, perhaps, but there is not exactly a shortage of cricket on Sky television already.

The dream that has been presented will no doubt convince some. “A nine-team elite Twenty20 tournament, including the world’s best players in iconic cricket venues, can build on the unique cricketing history and infrastructure in England,” it is claimed.

Profits are estimated, with questionable precision, at £7 million a team, but let us have some cricketing honesty here. It should be either this revamped nine-team extravaganza with profits genuinely shared, or a continued county league. In a properly balanced programme there is no realistic place for both.

New ideas that threaten county cricket’s increasingly unstable world are by no means as certain to be thrown out as they once were. The ECB’s governing board of 12 has a rather more independent approach to commercial and cricketing matters than the old county-based collection of 18 directors. Two of the 12, David Stewart, of Surrey, and Bradshaw, are supporters of the discussion document and the vice-chairman, Dennis Amiss, was for many years chief executive of Warwickshire, another county who would stand to benefit.

Nevertheless the chances are that the ECB’s board, having given the document a thorough airing next Tuesday, will reject it.