For the four semi-finalists, the Rose Bowl in Southampton will be the centre of the cricketing world tomorrow. Finals day in the Twenty20 Cup has become one of the season's big days, although not yet a national event, as the final of the knockout cup used to be in its Gillette and NatWest heyday. Strange, then, that two years hence this will be but one of two Twenty20 finals.

From 2010, this will be only one of five significant Twenty20 events in England and Wales every season, the climax of what may come to be seen as a relatively quaint old domestic tournament to be contested on Friday evenings after the new English Premier League (EPL). It will be played in conjunction - and to some extent in competition - with Twenty20 internationals against two touring teams at different times of the season. It replaces the NatWest Pro40 (the counties and the ECB could not bring themselves to reduce the overall programme) and the finals day will fall shortly before the Allen Stanford-sponsored tournament in London each September between England, West Indies and two other invited nations.

Nor does that list include the annual Stanford Challenge in Antigua, or the Champions League (in whatever guise) between various domestic champions. This, an ECB spokesman asserted yesterday, will have its birth in September, albeit more likely to be held in the Middle East than in India, as originally planned. Potentially, that makes seven Twenty20 competitions involving counties or the England team every season from 2010.

It makes you dizzy just to think about it. Where will it leave the Friends Provident Trophy final? Or the LV County Championship? Or the seven Test matches and the ten 50-over one-day internationals that Duncan Fletcher, the former England head coach, used to reckon was a minimum amount for the national team to compete with the best? That is the same England, by the way, whose success in the final of any world one-day competition is confined to a sole and distant success for the under-19s in 1998.

The more tournaments there are, the more each special event is diluted, which the ECB seems unable to grasp. Pile 'em high and sell 'em for as high a ticket price as you dare seems to be the policy. For the time being it is laughing all the way to the bank, but the ice is thin. It desperately needs England to win the third Test against South Africa at Edgbaston next week, for a start.

Although no one involved ever misses the opportunity to pay lip service to the absolute priority of Team England, the true reason for all these plans is to make more money. The ECB would argue that you cannot have a successful England team without the means to support them. This, of course, is one of the oldest arguments in the game: whether cricket is a sport or a business and whether it can be successful as a professional sport in the age of television and the internet, without making the raising of sufficient revenue its priority.

But lines have to be drawn. Take the sales of replica England caps and those fancy new lilywhite shirts, trousers and “sports tops” that have replaced the old cream flannels and cable-knit sweaters. The propaganda from the board - as voiced without a blush by David Collier, the chief executive, when the clothing first appeared at Lord's in May - was that anything that might give the England team a 1 per cent advantage against opponents in international cricket could be crucial. It did not do much good in the second Test against South Africa at Headingley Carnegie. As batsman after batsman walked to the middle to face Dale Steyn, Makhaya Ntini and Morne Morkel in their old-fashioned gear, that was exposed for the nonsense that it is. What matters is not breathable, body-clinging garments but discipline, concentration and sound cricketing technique.

The players like their new kit and are happy that its manufacturer, adidas, is a big international firm with research and development facilities that help the bowlers, for example, to find boots that suit them. But what everyone really likes about the five-year equipment deal, the players included, is the money. It is worth an estimated £8million to the ECB. That is before sales of the various shades of England's replica Test and one-day kits that have generated some £5million more, of which the ECB - and the England team via the Professional Cricketers' Association - makes a percentage.

No wonder priorities are confused. Australia have a similar deal with adidas, but one thing they have not commercialised is the baggy green cap. I take Mike Atherton's point about the sickly Australian reverence for the Baggy Green, but there are no replica sales there because that one piece of headgear symbolises national cricketing pride. It is the sort of pride that means overseas players rarely feature in the Sheffield Shield.

By contrast, it says something about the commitment of the ECB to building the necessary playing resources for prolonged success that it should take the French - after their rugby union clubs challenged the Kolpak ruling - to bail it out of its complacent acceptance of a European trade agreement that has so demonstrably acted against its own best interests for years. Let us hope that when the “domestic” finals day comes along again two years from now it will be the absence of more than a strict limit of overseas players that distinguishes it from an EPL that will be going all out to attract as many world stars as possible.