IT might be as well to make clear exactly where what follows comes from. It comes from arguably – no, make that probably, in fact very probably – Britain’s most reactionary cricket fan.

I dislike most aspects of the modern first class game. Not the (vastly) improved fielding. Not the innovative one day shots, consigning deeper to history my fragile cuttings, clipped daily from The News Chronicle back in 1953, of Len Hutton demonstrating every shot then known, and mastered, by the world’s best opening bat.

But the coloured clothing – yes. It renders a beautiful spectacle garish. Besides, while the original intention was to heighten cricket’s competitive element, all 22 players often now appear in similar colours, frequently dark.

The increasing obsession with playing the game under lights, which led to last week’s poorly-received pink-ball experiment, is another unwelcome trend. It is now aimed at championship matches and even Tests, for which some spectators travel considerable distances. Who wants to be leaving, say, Headingley, at 9.45 pm, facing perhaps a 60 mile journey back to northern North Yorkshire?

But worse than this is the concentration, by the sport’s bosses, in the England and Wales Cricket Board and at county level, on promoting the game as an all-action spectacle, with every ball either a soaring six or a shattered wicket.

So strongly is this now to the fore that when a new city-based T20 starts in 2020, with some matches screened live by the BBC, it will run simultaneously with Test matches. It reminds me, to draw a railway parallel, of the time I saw crowds swarming around Thomas the Tank at Grosmont, while Sir Nigel Gresley stood unregarded down the line – steam royalty usurped by a shunter.

The hope behind the T20 revolution is that the new audience drawn to it will graduate to fuller, richer, forms of the game. It’s hard to see why they should. The mistake is not to have introduced T20 but to have failed to promote the very different attractions of county cricket.

But do the guardians of the game even understand these? Floodlit games eliminate the lunch interval. Yet this is an enjoyable part of the spectating experience – an opportunity to read the papers, have a stroll around, perhaps visit the club shop, and share a conversation or two. The great cricket writer Neville Cardus even celebrated rain breaks for the same reasons.

If it be said that this has nothing to do with cricket – well, it has as much to do as what former Test captain Michael Vaughan, a leading advocate of razzmatazz cricket, identifies as the key attraction of wham-bam games. “The cricket is secondary to what the family is going to be entertained by.” He imagines a visiting family saying afterwards: “We got entertained by all sorts and, by the way, Aaron Finch hit a couple of sixes as well.”

But even Michael Vaughan fears that, up against the “T20 juggernaut on free-to-air, Test cricket will slide under the radar even more than it has now.” Cricket has sold its soul. And the proof is that the broadcasters of the new T20 have been handed a role in shaping both that and its counterpart in county cricket. Those supposed to love the game have puzzling ways of showing it.