KEY POINTS:
When cricket lovers woke on Thursday they faced an inescapable truth: their sport was irreversibly different than it had been the day before.
The next couple of years will determine if it has changed for the better, worse, or just plain changed. But make no mistake, it will never be the same again.
"The genie is out of the bottle," New Zealand Cricket chief executive Justin Vaughan said. "The ICL started it and the IPL followed."
Vaughan spent most of last week in Malaysia, at a council of ICC member nations chief executives. Not surprisingly, the Twenty20 leagues were the main topic of discussion.
The potential consequences of Wednesday's Indian Premier League auction on world cricket are so wide-reaching it is close to impossible to sum up in a single story. It is easier to quantify the costs and benefits to the sport in this country.
Vaughan said there was a general acknowledgement that New Zealand, and possibly the West Indies, was the most "at-risk" nation.
The most immediate result of the 'T20 war' is our best cricketers are now rich. With the right advice and investment choices, Brendon McCullum, who went at auction for $875,000 a year over three years, Jacob Oram ($843,000), Daniel Vettori ($780,000) and Shane Bond (an estimated $3 million at the ICL for three years), need not worry too much about life after cricket.
Stephen Fleming, Craig McMillan and Hamish Marshall have potentially set themselves up for life through the IPL and ICL, while Daryl Tuffey, Andre Adams, Nathan Astle, Chris Cairns and Scott Styris have done very nicely.
Cricket is a genuine path to riches for talented young New Zealanders and, given the talent pool is not that big, the chances of making it big in cricket are greater than in rugby.
It's a point Vaughan was keen to hammer home when the Herald on Sunday broke the news of the landmark $50m broadcast contract with Sony Television India.
"When kids reach that age when they're deciding which sport they want to concentrate on then we should be telling them 'if you think you can make a good career in rugby well, they can make an equally good career, even better, out of cricket'. We perhaps couldn't have said that a couple of years ago,"Vaughan said. Well, the IPL and ICL have taken that to new levels and beyond.
Not every current New Zealand player has been rewarded. Guys like Kyle Mills, Chris Martin and James Franklin have given yeoman service over a number of years and must feel aggrieved when distinctly ordinary players like Sri Lanka's Nuwan Zoysa, South Africa's Loots Bosman and Zimbabwean exile Tatenda Taibu are rewarded with six-figure hand-outs. Young tyros like Ross Taylor, Jamie How and Jesse Ryder will soon want their slice of the pie. Even Australian David Hussey, with barely an international, has pocketed US$675,000.
It has helped create an atmosphere where normally honest people have become economical with the truth. Deals are done in backrooms and airport lounges as player agents and managers work overtime to keep bank accounts, and egos, fed.
As has been stated, New Zealand is particularly vulnerable. While it is noble that players like Michael Clarke and Alastair Cook want to concentrate on international cricket, they have that luxury. Both earn three times what a Mills or Martin could through their central contracts. Both are young enough to change their minds.
Vaughan said the most his organisation could do was keep its ear to the ground and talk to the at-risk players about the inherent dangers of signing for the ICL, a competition he doesn't believe is sustainable.
"Particularly as the ICL is still not proven, we are not in an environment where we have to learn to co-exist with the IPLs of this world," he said. "We are in an environment where we are attempting to eliminate the ICL if possible."
Not only the IPL's big money will impact New Zealand. This tournament is scheduled to start on April 18 and end on June 1, when New Zealand is well into its tour of England.
Already there has been loose talk of Vettori, the captain, McCullum, the vice-captain, Oram, the senior player, joining the squad late.
Common sense will surely prevail but to contemplate beginning a tour without them is a joke.
Vaughan will talk to the players involved over the next couple of days.
"On the one hand it's not ideal if the captain, vice-captain and senior player aren't there from day one of the tour," Vaughan said. "But you don't want to get caught up in how it looks; what we want is the best possible preparation for the test match. We need John Bracewell's view about how he sees it. They have done very well out of the auction but they have years two and three to benefit out of that."
The more insidious possibility is that the IPL will eventually play havoc with the New Zealand domestic season. If the tournament teams double to 16, the IPL could start in March when our marquee test series is normally played.
Australia are not so badly affected because their season can start earlier.
There is another uncomfortable truth for players and their association to consider.
With squillions of rupees on offer, complaints about player burnout and too much cricket dissipated. That hypocrisy has not gone unnoticed.
Nor, too, should the words of Heath Mills, the players' association boss, be ignored. Mills must feel caught between a role as advocate for players with dollar signs in their eyes and acting in the best interests of the sport - which do not always equate to the same thing.
"It is unfair to blame the players for taking contract opportunities and plying their trade in cricket leagues as they are only reacting to the environment that is being created for them by the administrators," Mills said. "If the structure of that environment now results in private franchise competitions that impact on the international game then I would suggest the ICC and its members had better quickly convene a meeting and have a rethink about what they doing, though I fear that the horse has already bolted.
"In essence, as far as it impacts on NZC and the international game, the IPL is no different to the ICL - NZC has no share in the IPL and gains no return for supporting it and releasing its players to aid in its success. In many respects the IPL could end up growing to the point that it reduces the international programme and NZC's principal source of revenue. Therefore the IPL could have a far greater impact on NZC than the ICL ever could."
Just last week in this newspaper, he worried that the aspirations of young cricketers might change: that the IPL and to a lesser extent ICL will become the holy grail, rather than the awarding of a black cap.
Because that could be the future.
As Melbourne Age columnist Greg Baum wrote on Thursday: "Sport is at its best when spectators feel that players share their cause. IPL cricketers will have time only to learn to love their pay clerks and their first-class seats on the first flight out."
Emotive, yes, but a fair reflection of how many felt after the IPL player auction. Of course, all these suspicions and fears could prove unfounded.
It wasn't not that many years ago when a bullish broadcaster from Australia decided to shake cricket to its core. Only the most gin-sozzled soak at the Marylebone Cricket Club would say that cricket is a worse game for Packer's intervention.
What Packer never had, though, and what remains the pivotal difference between the two situations, is the backing of the cricket country whose wealth and dominance threatens to swamp the game.
