The announcement of a 100-ball form of cricket is yet more mildly depressing evidence that the glorious game is splitting into two forms: the classical and the popular. The former, Test cricket, is a codified, cultivated game played over five days and four long innings. It was amid the tactics and patience of “long-form” cricket that players cut their teeth. However, the classical game is dying in its pads. English county teams, who play the longer form, often get fewer spectators in a season than big football clubs get for one game. What are thriving are the “popular” shorter versions of cricket – their detractors consider them a different sport – such as the one-day game and Twenty20. These can be batting slugfests or target practice for pistol-quick bowling. Less treasured is the skill of building an innings and arranging the field to test a batsman’s – or woman’s – weaknesses. These are losses, aesthetic and otherwise, but the gain is popularity: 120 million people watched India’s domestic 2016 T20 final.

It did not have to be this way. English cricket has never been more popular than it was in 2005, when almost 23 million watched at least 30 minutes of England’s victorious Ashes series. Cricket became a victim of its own success: Sky bought the TV rights and the game disappeared from terrestrial television. Today it has never been less popular. The England and Wales Cricket Board’s own survey of schoolchildren showed that three in five didn’t even rank cricket in their top-10 favourite sports. Instead of invigorating the classical form of the game, the ECB has created a novel 100-ball format and a new eight-team, city-based tournament. While this paper will mourn the demotion of the Test version, a crumb of comfort is that cricket will be shown live on BBC for the first time in 21 years from 2020.

In attempting to make cricket attractive, the 100-ball game is polluting the game’s best traditions. An innings split into 15 six-ball overs and another of 10 balls means the format would need a change the laws of the sport. This seems a step too far: why not just put the cash into the existing T20 competition? The answer is presumably that only the shock of the new can jolt life into the sport. India’s recent cricketing experience is worth recalling. It was only after India won the 2007 T20 World Cup in a heart-stopping final against old rivals Pakistan that the country embraced the fast and furious game. A year later and the laser shows, cheerleaders and Bollywood stars proved an instant hit. Today the domestic tournament attracts £400m in annual television rights from Star India. Players come from all over the world to pick up large pay packets. Yet Indians remain fascinated by a long innings of attrition and retain an eye for a bowler’s line and bounce.

Now the ECB has decided to submit cricket to the cult of the unsentimental – prepared to reinvent the game to save it by pulling in a billion pounds mostly from Sky, but with the BBC to reach a wider audience. One can only hope English cricket can lure people to make excursions across the border between popular and classical forms.