So are the counties pleased or p***ed off?

HUW TURBERVILL: There is talk of a break-away, but should they not be happy that the ECB have left them with T20, and are paying them £1.3m a year each?

^{Andrew Strauss and Colin Graves have been criticised for their explanations as to who The Hundred's target audience is}

A vast hangar in Peckham Rye. Bass-heavy (at times deafening) modern tunes. A huge cloud of chalky dust, kicked up from several games of softball cricket. This was where the ECB and/or New Balance chose to unveil England’s one-day kit for 2018: quite a contrast to the event two years ago, in Carnaby Street The ECB are keeping it real these days…

The message was not overly subtle. Cricket doesn’t have to be the domain of cosy counties, long-established clubs and public schools – the game is trying to become all-inclusive.

These are confusing times for the ‘traditional’ cricket fan. They listen as the ECB chairman, Colin Graves, tells them youngsters do not like the game ((a) I don’t think that is true, and b) why would you say it if it was? Gerald Ratner, eat your heart out!). They watch on as Eoin Morgan, England’s limited-overs captain, says he has mates who will come to the new 100-ball matches because they like the fact it is upsetting existing fans. Female fans then react with bemusement when Andrew Strauss says the new format will make “cricket as simple as possible” for “mums and kids”.

To be fair, we have to be grateful to these men for fronting up. They are a spin doctors’ nightmare, but at least they speak candidly.

But what exactly is going on?

Certainly it appears the ECB are adopting a recognisable form of business practice, by hinting that what went before wasn’t very good, but hey, don’t worry, because they are here now to sort it all out…

The fact is that the decision to give Sky a live monopoly in 2005 (as technically excellent as their coverage is, and how useful their money to the grassroots game has been) has probably resulted in players like Joe Root, Ben Stokes and Alastair Cook being less recognisable in the high street.

So fair play to Graves and co… there probably was a need to create a short-form rival to the IPL and Big Bash (albeit 17 years after we unveiled the format on a sceptical world): in the summer holidays, and with some terrestrial coverage.

But then it all started going wrong with the 100-ball announcement.

Why does the ECB think that this format will attract a new audience in a way that T20 has already done in India and Australia? Are the English different from Australians or Indians? Are they not as clever? Do they have shorter attention spans? Are they less predisposed to be attracted to cricket?

^{England's white-ball kits were unveiled this week}

What is the counties’ role in all this?

On Thursday the BBC reported a warning by Andy Nash, former Somerset chairman and ex-ECB board member. He says the counties could break away to form their own organisation "within the auspices of the national governing body", such as the Premier League in football, and the Premiership in rugby union. I speculated the same thing in the May edition of The Cricketer.

But surely the counties are happy and have got what they want? They have T20 all to themselves, which appears to be the overriding reason why the ECB felt they had to devise something new… (rather than the BBC insisting on cricket redux)… hence 100 balls, or 16.4 overs as some are calling it. The counties are also being paid £1.3m per year.

So in many ways they should be pretty content. Some of them must be sitting back delighted at the ridicule being poured on the ECB’s brainchild.

The problem will come if and when the 100-ball tournament is a success, and the eight new sides (Jets, Phantoms or whatever they are called) becomes popular, and the county competitions wither on the vine, as people like Vic Marks fear (see the June edition of the magazine).

Perhaps upon reflection the 100-ball idea is not so bad, per se, but having one over (10 balls) at the end longer than the others is not so cool. Ditto, having more than one bowler deliver it. It just doesn’t feel right. Perhaps they will see sense and have 20 five-ball overs. Or maybe they will just stick to T20, the world-standard format, proven and popular on a global stage.

Did Stuart Robertson know what he was unleashing when he devised T20, as marketing manager of the ECB? Despite some scepticism (although not as much as the 10-ball inception) the short form of the game has grown like Japanese Knotweed. It could engulf everything. Robertson could be regarded as cricket’s answer to J Robert Oppenheimer, if the taste police allowed me to make such a comparison.

Some may ask – what is wrong with the ECB trying to ensure cricket endures, and to recapture its erstwhile popularity (albeit in a new shortened form)?

Nothing… but the key is that the longer versions should not be eaten up in its wake. Something must be done about the County Championship conundrum – there are no games in London in June and none at Headingley from April 23 to August 2. This is unacceptable.

And when does this new cricket cease to actually be cricket? As Graham Gooch says in the June Cricketer: “Someone just standing there like a baseball player, clearing the front leg, and slogging to leg… I am sorry, but that’s just boring.”