AN EERIE feeling came over me as I watched that extraordinary game of cricket between Australia and South Africa from my hotel room in Chandigarh. Well, I saw the last 20-odd overs. I had been watching, and subsequently writing about, the second Test between India and England in Chandigarh’s twin city, Mohali.

Well, extraordinary doesn’t do it credit, really. To refresh your memory, Australia scored a record 434 for four in their 50 overs and lost. I saw the end of the matter, when South Africa somehow managed to finish on 438 for nine. That’s damn near nine an over. When I first started watching international cricket in the 1960s, more than two an over was reckoned to be downright reckless.

I watched the match on Indian television, a business that rather tries one’s patience. Not because they kept losing the satellite feed, or anything comic like that. The problem was the advertisements.

On Indian television, any moment when they give you an actual programme is bitterly resented by the station and is regarded as a wasted opportunity. So, naturally, there were adverts between every over. You were never off duty, always being nagged at, harried, pestered, or flirted at by lovely girls with rupees in their eyes.

On the occasions when the station was forced to show you the actual cricket, it kept up its interest with little pop-ups and ad-bars and sly little captions, all reminding you of things you can buy. Despite all this, I was, naturally, enjoying the cricket.

Then the thought hit me: am I watching the future of cricket? Nothing but sixes and adverts, big hits and big money? It was a chastening thought. I had just come from the Test and I had watched the match change before my eyes in a spell of mesmeric bowling from Anil Kumble. No sixes. An occasional breaking of the silken shackles, but on the whole, it was a biff-free session of cricket. And enthralling, of course. Not sexy, just brilliant.

Tony Greig, a man never frightened of hyperbole, said that the Australia-South Africa game was the greatest ever played. Meaning, no doubt, the greatest one-day international. And it was certainly remarkable enough. The enthralling thing was that it was exceptional. It was not what you expect. If we saw it every week, it would be infinitely less interesting.

Cricket comes in many forms these days. Test cricket is now far less popular on the sub- continent than the one-day game. Much of India is a brasher, less contemplative place than it was. Much of India is also in the middle of a passionate love affair with consumerism. Instant cricket, then the hard sell — these are parts of modern India.

Cricket’s rulers keep tinkering with one-day cricket to try to make it more sexy, with the now-abandoned supersubs, and the power play. Both are devices to encourage big- hitting batsmen, to make sexier television programmes, to allow the television station to sell more advertisements.

These are the facts of life in modern professional sport and there is no need to be squeamish about it. Twenty20 cricket was invented for much the same reason and you won’t hear a bad word about it, even from traditionalists. It widens the fan base, makes cricket sexier, and a professional sport needs sexiness if it is make its financial way.

I don’t oppose change, but all the same, the more a sport seeks sexiness, the more it is in danger. Twenty20, jolly good fun and all that, is basically cricket for people who don’t really like cricket. This is a process you see in other sports — they adjust to please people who don’t really like the sport.

In baseball, the American League wanted more home runs, so they allowed a player to bat for the pitcher, as designated hitter. The National League prides itself on being a purer form of the game and, indeed, the sight of the pitcher coming on at crucial stage needing to find an alien competence is a riveting aspect to the game. But not if you want more home runs.

Football was looking for a television-friendly way to resolve drawn games and came up with the penalty shoot-out. This is not football. Worse, it creates matches when both sides agree not to play football, so they can settle the matter on penalties. There is no way of changing this now because television viewers love the drama.

It is the selling-out of the heartland. Don’t consider football-lovers, cricket-lovers, baseball-lovers because they’ll watch anyway. You can take them for granted. The people you are interested in are those who don’t even like the game. Give them spectacular and dramatic television and the money rolls in.

It is a policy that works. But there are two great dangers. The first is that the betrayed heartland audience might not be as content with a second-rate product as the marketing people thought. And the second is that if you attempt to make allies of fickle people, don’t be surprised if they find something sexier next week. The danger of the process is that you end up losing both your heartland and your fringe audience. Is that the future of sport?