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Embrace or abandon: time here for ICC to act

Beyond the furious batting, the retro uniforms and the general fanfare of last night's inaugural Twenty20 international, a more serious issue surfaced at Auckland's Eden Park.

Beyond the furious batting, the retro uniforms and the general fanfare of last night's inaugural Twenty20 international, a more serious issue surfaced at Auckland's Eden Park.

Given that, in its present, meandering format, Twenty20 cricket is essentially meaningless - and past reports into match-fixing have urged administrators to rid the sport of matches without substance - how will the International Cricket Council ensure that the 20-over game does not become the most corruptible form of cricket?

With no ranking system, no record keeping and no recognised method of tallying averages, last night's debut Twenty20 international between Australia and New Zealand was the kind of match that, historically, has struck fear into the hearts of cricket's anti-corruption and security unit.

To date, the ICC has been firm in its resolve to end meaningless one-day tournaments, form a Test and limited-overs table and, more recently, obtain the rights to an official ranking system for batsmen and bowlers. All measures were designed to ensure meaning and structure to both forms of cricket.

Now comes Twenty20 cricket, a shortened form of the game originally devised to draw crowds back to English county matches. Never was it supposed to rival one-day cricket. Never was it intended to be played at international level.

But the spectacular, unexpected success of Twenty20 - coupled with concerns surrounding the increasingly stale 50-over format - has led to the game growing largely unchecked through English, South African and Australian domestic cricket and, now, the international scene.

The time has come for a decision from the ICC. Either embrace and formalise Twenty20 cricket, or abandon it. Allowing the game to continue in its present, aimless format opens the door for corruption, if the lessons of past corruption scandals are anything to go by.

The fixing of results aside, previous investigations into cricket found that spread-betting - whereby odds are outlayed on specific outcomes within a match - was favoured by corrupt bookmakers, who tried to bribe players to follow their own, crooked scripts.

Games such as last night's Australia-NZ match, while a hit with the fans at Eden Park, had no relevance to any international competition. And players' places in Test and one-day teams were in no way dependent on their performances in the Twenty20 international, officially sanctioned as an exhibition game although apparently important enough to cram into an already saturated international schedule.

Concerned at the potential impact of Twenty20 cricket worldwide, investigators from the ICC's anti-corruption and security unit will meet soon to discuss the new format and whether it will undermine their policing and educational work.

With its international arrival last night, Twenty20 cricket must be either assigned a place in official cricket programming or dismissed out of hand. Betting agencies the world over offered odds on the Australia-NZ match.

Accordingly, history suggests that meaning must accompany the outcome. Or else.

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