Cricket is now managed by business interests, making the lucrative T20 game a more attractive investment than the traditional centrepiece of the game, the Test.

There have over the last half-century been two revolutions in the game of cricket. One is administrative in the form of a shift to corporate management; the other the rise of the short-form T20 version. Neither revolution has ended yet, which means their full influence has yet to be seen.

Let’s take the evolution of the game’s management first. In the mid-1970s, cricket around the world was managed and administered at all levels by cricketers. At the local (club) level, that meant past and present players running the show, and at higher levels the governing bodies up to national level were constituted by people elected from the grass roots. Chairs of national boards were almost always known former cricketers. Business and other specialist expertise needed for management was sourced from outside the boards rather than businesspeople populating the boards themselves.

Today’s management scene is quite different. In Australia the change began with Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in 1977, a businessman’s interest challenging a national board’s interest for the first time. A change was instituted that over time saw governing bodies everywhere become heavy with figures from the commercial world. This reflected the simple fact that the game had become a commodity exploitable by capital. Today’s Cricket Australia’s board of ten has two former........

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