Test matches attract good attendances only in a few countries © Getty Images

“Other people might feel different.” Such were Nasser Hussain’s ominously heartfelt words the day after the announcement of the Champions League. He was referring to the notion of Test cricket as the game’s pinnacle. All-too wisely, he expressed the fear that future generations, of players and spectators, could well disagree, that the appeal of a five-day ballgame might soon dwindle even more quickly for players than it currently is for spectators who prefer bucket seat to armchair. It was difficult not to share his fears.

So much has happened to cricket over the past year, at such a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it rate, that keeping pace with developments is becoming akin to plotting the emotional graph of a teenager. One thing, though, must be clear to anyone who holds the game dear: we have reached a crossroads. The past and future will soon be considered the modern equivalent to BP and AP (Before Packer and After Packer). Enterprise, player power and Mammon sit in one corner, fear, loathing and rose-tinted nostalgia in the other. The prize is cricket’s future – and its soul.

That soul lies not in cricket’s so-called “spirit” but in the way that, at what is perceived to be its highest level of expression, ie. four-innings matches, two elements above all combine to benefit humanity: second chances are possible and artificiality barely intrudes. You can redeem yourself. Bowlers are not restricted by over-counts, nor captains by fielding circles. Tests are novels, ODIs short stories, Twenty20 cartoons. All are equally valid, but who has time for short stories? Either you want the depth and escapism of the full Monty or you prefer to flick through the pics – or both. Cricket is unique in offering two such disparate options. Long may it be so.

Accepting that the game’s loudest format is going to form an increasingly large portion of our cricketing diet is the no-brainer bit. It makes sound financial sense to all the major parties concerned: boards, players and broadcasters (since when have spectators, increasingly marginalised as the less affluent are becoming, been able to vote with anything other than their feet?). The trick is to decide whether there is a will to protect Test matches, which attract good attendances in only a small minority of nations and will become increasingly less attractive to players if the alternative is sufficiently profitable. Why worry about how Wisden will evaluate you in 50 years’ time if you can earn a bundle now? Given the choice between posterity or financial security, what would YOU do? The “others” Nasser referred to may soon be the majority.

And if that will exists, which it appears to, the next two steps are reasonably straightforward: 1) forge an organic, umbilical link between Twenty20 and Tests by making the former a four-innings affair, and 2) giving us the bonafide World Test Championship so many have craved for so long.

Encouragingly, the ICC have confirmed that they are examining the possibility of the latter. In which case, the first step is plain: scrap the Future Tours Programme. And the World Championship table, which has served as an accurate barometer but is so non-punter-friendly that the latest table can only be worked out with the aid of a press release. The FTP was also welcome and well-intended, but fatally unwieldy and too often observed strictly in the breach. How often do Bangladesh play England or Australia? How can New Zealand play two Tests in a year when 12 are stipulated? What, pray, is the point of a best-of-two series? All these mooted windows for IPLs and EPLs and Champions Leagues will make it unworkable anyway.

Better, surely, to devise a biennial or even annual World Test Championship and leave all other fixtures in the lap of the individual boards, as it was for more than a century. Which will probably lead to a preference for one-off games rather than series. Even the long-running rivalries may shrink and lessen in frequency – anyone for a three-match Ashes clash? On the other hand, the less you play, the less prepared you will be when the WTC comes around. One-off engagements in Bangladesh and Ireland, say, might well prove attractive in terms of providing practice while earning funds for the hosts and stimulating interest for the game there. But the chief means of opportunity for the lesser lights should be Twenty20, which by its very length reduces the gap between stars and amateurs, and hence the possibilities for embarrassment and diminishment.

	Twenty20 is going to form an increasingly large portion of our cricketing diet © AFP

So how would the WTC work? Tricky one. Ideally, we would rule out home advantage by playing knockout games on neutral territory. Imagine Australia v Pakistan in Mumbai, Sri Lanka v West Indies in Durban, India v South Africa at Lord’s, England v New Zealand in Sydney. Each tournament would have to have a designated venue for the final, if only to allow the hosts sufficient time to prepare a worthy pitch and marketing campaign.

On the other hand, staging all the games in one country, on a rotational basis a la the World Cup, would concentrate and heighten the commercial appeal. This, though, would mean flexibility in terms of timing: England in late summer, the rest in their most climactically clement month. And yes, biting the bullet on floodlights, with a pink ball if necessary, would be imperative.

As to who participates, there is an argument for going straight to the quarter-finals and drawing the eight senior nations against each other. Better, though, to invite the best Associate nations – according to results in the Intercontinental championship, arguably the ICC’s foremost contribution to the evolution of first-class cricket – to participate in a 16-team knockout. Sure, most of the first-round games would be over inside two days, but thereafter competition would hot up. Besides, we could always spice things up by giving the minnows home advantage. Who knows what terrors might lurk in Dublin or Amsterdam.

The last and most crucial trick will be to protect and promote the five-day fray in the way that we preserve and sell the finer arts. As a duty to mankind and future generations. Which means putting the emphasis on quality rather than quantity. Scarcity can become an asset. Test cricket should be added to the burgeoning heritage industry, hoisted alongside the Sydney Opera House and the National Gallery: as a living, breathing, vibrant slice of 21st-Century culture that also encompasses a sense of history. Benefactors and patrons will be needed. Creative marketing will be crucial.

As CLR James always maintained, cricket is an art form. And never more than in its first-class incarnation. Those hyphenated words, for all that they exude a top-hat-and-tailed snobbery and snottery, are not misplaced. We’re talking top-of-the-range here, folks, the Maserati-cum-Sistine Chapel of sporting endeavour. It may not always reap profits but it has value. It reminds us that life need not be frenetic, that winning isn’t everything, that a hard-earned draw can be every bit as satisfying, that second chances and redemption are possible. Name a sport that sends out a better message to children.

And yes, governments must be prevailed upon to play their part. Funding Olympic athletes hasn’t exactly done much for their credibility. Isn’t it about time they showed their supposed commitment to sport, not only by supporting one with a regular and loyal global audience, but one in which drugs are probably less help than hindrance?

	The Kings Commission enquiry © AFP

It was, remarkably to some no doubt, the first time I’d seen coverage of the King Commission, seen the way the falling icon had suddenly aged; the clarity of the voice undercut by the shiftiness of the speaker; those moony child-like eyes, imploring for forgiveness; the tears; the two men it took to escort his buckling body from court. For the first time, too, I saw the poker-faced denials to television cameras, not to mention those three wides Henry Williams bowled in that fateful opening over in India.

Even though the dots were never completely joined up, what came across most clearly was what I had always suspected: that, at bottom, as Dr Ali Bacher hinted, it was C*****’s refusal to help the transformation/integration process – or even acknowledge that it was important - that did most to fuel the anger and cynicism that ultimately allowed him to take money and gifts from Marlon Aronstam and others. A cynicism that made it oh-so-easy to bring two insecure coloured players, Williams and Herschelle Gibbs, into his web of conceit and deceit. That, for me, was his greatest crime.

Speaking three months before his death, Bob Woolmer told of how his former captain had recently reiterated to him, shortly before Cronje’s fatal air crash, that, while he may have taken the money, he vowed he had never fixed a match. Aronstam, the chap who gave C***** a leather coat for his wife (plus a few thousand dollars) in exchange for purportedly breathing life into the sodden 2000 Centurion Test against England, inferred otherwise, but then trusting a bookie is never a shrewd move. Then again, occupying the same bed as one, if you are a professional sportsman, is not all that much cleverer. The only guarantees are that a) the sex won’t be that hot and b) you will emerge in a lot worse ethical and moral shape.

All too credible was the theory that C*****, as captain, had grown too powerful, that Woolmer and even Bacher, to an extent, had bowed to his strength, success, popularity and overweening white pride. Yet one of the most poignant and telling observations came from Tim Noakes, professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Cape Town, who suggested C***** fell prey to insecurity rather than greed alone. His own insecurity, yes, but the implication, in keeping with the first half of Paul Yule’s judicious and moving programme, was that this was also the insecurity of any Afrikaaner, or any white South African for that matter, in the face of the post-Mandela world, a world in which they could no longer run sport in the Republic as a fiefdom, for their own exclusive gratification. For once, Bacher came out of it all rather well, as a well-meaning, harassed sales manager unable to halt the shady gambits and unscrupulous ruses of his most dynamic salesman.

The other most resonant comment came from the headmaster of C*****’s public school, Greys College, the bloke who had coached him as a boy. To him, the game was no longer the same, no longer as captivating or trustworthy, no longer as worthy of his love and devotion. And that, he regretted, was down to C*****.

In the background was a shot of a barely-occupied South African ground in the middle of a Test. Someone suggested that this was assuredly no coincidence, that the game there has yet to recover. For my part, I now think twice before accepting any close finish at face value. Public distrust, rampant cynicism and a game forever scarred: such is the legacy of H***** C*****.

Cricket, according to my own heartfelt prejudices, has been polluted by one criminally soulless conspiracy – the cabal of politicians and administrators that initially kept Basil D’Oliveira out of the 1968-69 MCC party to South Africa - and three villains: WG Grace, Douglas Jardine, and H***** C*****. Arrogant, ruthless, actual or spiritual cheats all three. I can forgive WG because I’m ultimately grateful for his existence: the game might never have gained a secure foothold in the wider global consciousness without him. I can forgive Jardine, just about, if only because he was no more focused on the Ashes than Ian Chappell or Steve Waugh, and also because of the way he was cast aside once he’d outlived his usefulness. H***** C*****? When I’m 64, maybe, but not yet. Not by a long chalk.