The new face of cricket - big money and short attention spans

Shane Bond's impressive price tag as New Zealand's new million-dollar man has clearly reaffirmed world cricket's new direction.

Twenty20, particularly at international level, is becoming more firmly entrenched with each lucrative swing of the bat as the Indian Premier League prepares for its mid-March series launch.

It's March Madness as many of the world's leading players look to justify their obscene pay packets.

Generally speaking, what India wants, India gets. They're the most wealthy, and therefore the most powerful, entity in world cricket, and with a population of 1.2 billion, the most demanding of audiences.

So if the Kolkata Knights insist that New Zealand's premier pace bowler is worth US$750,000 (NZ$1.013 million), then who are we to quibble?

You can't blame world-class players like Bond and his IPL team-mate Brendon McCullum for wanting to guarantee their financial futures.

You must be deemed worthy of competing in the first place, and fellow Kiwis Lou Vincent, Nathan McCullum and Grant Elliott clearly were not.

The purists might still question the notion that cricket's version of sevens rugby is seriously threatening the future of test cricket.

Yet, in an age where attention spans are constantly being eroded by alternative distractions, less is definitely more.

Sevens will never usurp 15-a-side rugby because a full game lasts only 80 minutes – give or take the added time spent pandering to the game's commercial interests.

But compare three hours of constant Twenty20 action to the five days it takes to decide a test, and the instant gratification of flash and flourish is tough to beat.

Pakistan's suicidal batsmen ensured that the second test against Australia in Sydney arguably generated as much excitement as any abridged version of the game.

Still, punters are voting with their feet, and Twenty20 appears to be winning the battle to consistently attract audiences.

Money will always be the deciding factor, and New Zealand's cricket administrators might rightly argue that it doesn't matter which form of the game people watch, provided it drags them through the gates.

The current HRV Cup national Twenty20 series is capturing the attention of many people in need of a quick fix – even converting some of the more diehard purists.

Nelson got a taste of Twenty20 action last weekend when it hosted two HRV Cup matches, with the initial evidence suggesting that the locals liked what they saw.

It's likely that more will follow, with full internationals also now a distinct possibility.

You'll never replace test cricket, although there needs to be some revision of the way the game is marketed and made more attractive to the public.

As the serious money-earner, though, the incidence of Twenty20, at all levels, is only likely to increase.