I started to post this as a comment on JP’s blog, but it got a bit out of hand so I’m posting it here:
I think Twenty20 cricket is classically Disruptive in the sense that it was not conceived as a replacement for other one-day formats but will inevitably replace them. All the futile tinkering with one-day cricket, like PowerPlays (yech!) and the Pro-40 competition, is the equivalent of management-driven technology “innovation”. The real action is somewhere else altogether.
Allen Stanford in the West Indies and the Zee media group in India got it, and launched their own Twenty20 competitions outside the official management structure. Now, belatedly, the national boards and the ICC are coming to the party with their World Twenty20 Championship, mere months ofter the disastrous 50-over World Cup earlier this year.
50-over cricket might survive a few years longer, but the money is in Twenty20 right now. 50-over cricket can’t survive without sponsorship.