Pinch hitting and penny pinching, and the rise of money in cricket

However, there is good reason to be wary of how these changes will affect Test cricket. The tension between the formats is a financial one, and in recent times the dollar and rupee has spoken loudest.

Only the Big Three turn a profit on Test cricket; a format which takes a large amount of time and effort to stage and which wraps-up players for an extended period of time. For the smaller boards, the return is not great and is often a loss, especially compared to the T20 format which garners many casual viewers.

In the strictest sense, a board like New Zealand would find it much more cost-effective to have a player like the dynamic wicketkeeper-batsmen Brendon McCullum playing three T20 matches rather than one Test match. In this year's IPL auction he alone fetched a cool $525,000 USD, and when he plays for his T20 IPL team the Chennai Super Kings he'll be playing in front of more than 50,000 spectators; ironically, far more than the number of spectators he played in front of when New Zealand posted a historic win over India in the first Test across five-days at the beginning of the month.

Early indications of a preference for the lucrative money of the short formats over the Test format are the new regime's scraping of the proposal of a Test championship in favour of a reinstatement of the One-Day competition played by leading nations: The Champion's Trophy.

It is also revealing to see that in the leaked document, the Big Three had proposed a two-tier Test competition where they (the biggest earners) could not be relegated to the second tier. That is, that no matter their on-field results, India, Australia and England could not go down a division in the mused competition. That's not how sport is supposed to work, but it is technically good business.

But perhaps the biggest source of anxiety is simply the uncertainty that comes with knowing that now the whims of Indian cricket are going to be far more influential in structuring the world game. And if there is one board where greed and short-term gain prevail, recent evidence has shown, it is the BCCI.

N Srinivasan, the master-mind of the reforms to the ICC, is the president of the BBCI and current Chairman of the ICC. He is an ardent capitalist in his business life, having orchestrated hostile takeovers of rival companies in the cement game, where he made his name. He has a case pending against him in the Indian Supreme Court on the basis of conflict of interest, drawing from his dual roles as administrator of the BCCI and owner of IPL team the Chennai Super Kings. Of course, the BCCI had regulations against administrators gaining financially from BCCI competition, but further allegations suggest Srinivasan used his position to circumvent that clause. He is also accused of other instances of corruption to do with his business practices outside cricket.

Srinivasan's son-in-law, also a team official for the Chennai Super Kings, was last week indicted for passing on sensitive information to bookies during the 2013 IPL. This following a report into the IPL which contains allegations of spot-fixing, and as Indian police continue an investigation into a match between the Rajistan Royals the Super Kings last year. If these allegations pan-out we can only hope that these preferences for capital over cricket aren't transported to the international game.

Cricket Australia (CA) was perhaps the only board which could have stood up to the BCCI in these proposals but instead has fallen in line and joined them, taking the opportunity to further increase their financial share of the game's wealth. This is perhaps not surprising given the changes CA has made to its domestic competitions in search of larger broadcast revenue.

Again jeopardising the long form game, CA has season split-up the traditional Sheffield Shield competition into two halves, and placed the highly marketed - "flat-cap" and trampolinist-filled KFC Big Bash T20 competition in the middle. This moves the cash cow 20-over competition into the prime period of the cricket season with our four-day competition floundering at the edges.

This is a transparent - and apparently successful - move to gain large media deals. As is plain to see when you turn on to watch the BBL you often hear players on the field talking to the commentary team; sometimes even in-between balls while batting. As far as I'm aware, this is the only sport where players are expected to commentate and compete at the same time.

We have already experienced the difficulty this change in scheduling creates, because when it comes to selecting and preparing players for Test matches there is no long-form domestic cricket on offer. It also has an effect on the development of young players. The BBL franchise and state cricket team are different entities, with the former paying more than the later. The BBL further opens the door to even more financial incentives by giving young players a platform on which to be selected for the IPL - where players can earn over a million dollars US for three months work!