Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Friday sees the start of England's cricket tour of India and with seven one day games scheduled and only two Tests. The writing was already beginning to be pencilled on the wall for the longer version of the game way before the now infamous Stanford game was played.
This Twenty20 match now hangs over the England dressing room like a very dark cloud and it is difficult to see how it will be lifted apart from a run of very fine results on the pitch and this looks like a significant challenge given the host's performances against the Australians.
There is no doubt the Stanford match was an embarrassment - but who is to blame and who will recover - are much more difficult questions to answer.
It all begins with the Indian Premier League and the seismic changes it made on the cricket landscape with the money and format the organisers devised for the shortest version of the game ever. The best players in the world were paid vast amounts of money for short contracts - but crucially because of the season schedules it did not include England's players.
In a desperate attempt to appease its world class stars and try and dilute the influence of the IPL the England and Wales Cricket Board signed up to an astonishing deal with the brash multi-millionaire Sir Allen Stanford. For this alliance the ECB would enter a five-year deal that would include a one-off winner-takes-all-match for $1million (BD383,000) per player.
The match itself was no spectacle at all but what led up to the game was more than entertaining in a bad sit-com kind of way.
Complaints about the pitch were followed by complaints about the floodlights then complaints about the behaviour of Stanford were followed by issues about the integrity of the event and so it went on. It got to the stage that Graham Swann complained that Stanford was walking around the ground like he owned the place .... which actually he did.
If the stories are true that the England players held a 40-minute meeting before the game to discuss how to handle the media should they win the money then this indicates just what a mess they had got themselves in.
Sport is, and always has been, about winning and money has always played a significant part and why not, given the physical sacrifices sportsmen make and the enjoyment they bring. However, this match was purely about the money and the England camp found that ideal difficult to embrace and left them in no man's land when it came to justifying their involvement.
The humiliating defeat has only added to the confusion about what it as all for and heaven only knows what the review of the five-year contract will encompass and, to be honest, I am not sure it matters. The damage has been done in that the ECB have failed to understand the current climate in world cricket and any hope they might do so now seems forlorn.
Twenty20 is here to stay of that I am certain but the demand for Test matches still remains, particularly in England where grounds are always sold out.
The ECB, though, have been caught up in chasing the money whether it be signing deals with satellite TV channels or aligning themselves with Stanford. Of course, securing the financial stability of a sport is essential but not at the expense of the original product.
In other countries, especially India and Pakistan, the longer version is not as popular as it was and they are embracing the shorter version very quickly out of necessity, as much as anything else, but that does not mean the English have to follow suit.
It is possible that the 50-over format of the game which has become increasingly frustrating to watch because of its predictable nature is in more danger than the five-day game which the success of the Twenty20 World Cup will be a good indicator for. The IPL is also here to stay and the ECB's problem of finding a way to appease its contracted players, which the alliance with Stanford was intended to do, has still not been resolved.
There is no doubt in mind that Twenty 20 is a good addition to the cricketing landscape as it is modern, time limited and media friendly but at its heart it is a little dissatisfying for the more traditional supporter.
Test cricket provides this satisfaction and so should remain at the heart of any long term planning but it will take people of vision and courage to find that important balance and given the efforts of the ECB so far this utopia is a long way from being realised.
