Is this the end of the cricketing world?

Will there be a day when New Zealand does not, or cannot, field a test cricket team?

Will there come a time when our cricket system is nothing but a production line of Twenty20 specialists for franchises in Delhi, Middlesex, Durban and Perth?

It's a frightening thought but it's not so far from reality according to Australian captain Ricky Ponting.

In his Captain's Diary 2008 Ponting wrote that, while test cricket remained a big deal for countries like Australia, England and South Africa, and to a lesser extent India, it would become increasingly irrelevant to the likes of West Indies and New Zealand.

"We cannot afford to lose teams such as New Zealand and the West Indies from international cricket," Ponting wrote, "but my fear is that this could happen if the game cannot strike a balance between tests and one-day internationals and the IPL's riches.

"Unless such a balance can be achieved, I could see some countries' cricket teams declining in the way Zimbabwe's sides have struggled over the past few years."

New Zealand and Zimbabwe in the same basket case? We'd like to think not, but, sadly, because the viability of cricket in New Zealand relies entirely on the ICC's revenue-sharing model, this country is at the mercy of the powerful nations, particularly India, where Twenty20 is a phenomenon that is showing no sign of fading.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who is due here next month with the West Indies touring party, says players are increasingly eyeing the huge pay days offered by Twenty20, but he believes the test format will remain the game's foremost outlet.

Chanderpaul was defending the controversial Stanford Super Series tournament, in which a West Indies-dominated team banked $US20m after beating an England outfit that seemed to find the whole exercise unseemly and alluring at the same time.

Chanderpaul said it was now possible for players to earn as much in a few weeks of Twenty20 as they normally would over the course of a gruelling test year.

"Twenty20 is where it's headed right now," Chanderpaul said.

"A lot of the players are gearing up to play Twenty20 because there is a lot of money in it. Some of the players will focus mainly on Twenty20 and some will want to play all the games."

The fact India's vast cricket- loving populace can sustain interest in, and fund payments for, two Twenty20 leagues (IPL and ICL) is proof that the shortest version of the game could yet claim more entire national sides, as we recently saw with Bangladesh.

What if Dan Vettori, Brendon McCullum, Jesse Ryder, Jake Oram, Kyle Mills and Tim Southee all opted to play only Twenty20 for a living? Shane Bond, for one, seems content to do so.

The counter-argument goes that players are only valuable for Twenty20 franchises because of what they've achieved for their countries at test level.

But the more Twenty20 comes into the mainstream, the more players will be able to specialise in that form of the game and focus entirely in that sub-species.

The fact there's now a bat available primarily for Twenty20 (it has a flat spot on the back to allow the batsmen to use both sides of the blade) says a lot about where the game is going. That sort of bat is just what's needed by the likes of young Sydney all-rounder Dave Warner, who can bat equally well left or right handed and is a model player for the future.

"You see the money in cricket over in India and as a young person your eyes get lit up. If there's that much money, why wouldn't I do that?" Warner says.

"You still want to play for your country in test cricket but, in the meantime while you're coming up and you're not getting that opportunity, of course you're going to want to go and play it.

"The Pontings who are fading out of the game because of their age, I don't know if they're suited to the game [Twenty20] at the moment but definitely the young guys coming through have got the opportunity of a lifetime.

"The longer version is definitely fading out and the older guys aren't going to like it because they're not going to get the opportunities over there [in India] like we are."

How many more Warners are out there, ready to kick through the scattered bones of cricket history as they make their way to a richer future? A lot, I'd say. Money has that effect on people.

Obviously there are still enough purists prepared to pay for the pleasure of watching test cricket, which remains a game of subtlety, nuance, pressure and attrition, as opposed to something you might find in a video game.

And as long the fan base remains for tests, cricket's third wave is likely to remain something just less than a tsunami.

But we'd be foolish to ignore Ponting's warning.

* Michael Donaldson is the Sunday Star-Times' sports editor.

- © Fairfax NZ News