The Libra Legends v the Sagittarius Strikers is a T20 event far too far

COMMENT: If T20 is cricket's golden egg it is being scrambled, fried and boiled in the Middle East

Gavin Hamilton, who scored no runs, took no wickets and held no catches in his one and only Test for England in South Africa, is set to take part in the Masters Champions League in Dubai (Getty Images)

That cricket can be a cruel mistress, a Miss Whiplash in whites, or the appropriate coloured clothing for shorter sessions (where the paddle sweep means something else entirely), is nowhere better demonstrated than in the four-day Test career of Gavin Hamilton. An able county player for a dozen years, Hamilton became the most unfortunate of one-Test wonders when England toured South Africa in 1999. He made no runs, took no wickets and held no catches.

Hamilton spent nine balls in the middle at the Wanderers. He never played for England again and in time requalified for Scotland. He still plays club cricket but, aged 41, is very definitely retired from the first-class game, which is why he will be in Dubai next week meeting up with five others who played in his solitary Test as part of rather more significant international careers.

Jacques Kallis, Jonty Rhodes, Herschelle Gibbs, Michael Vaughan and Darren Gough will be in the UAE, as will Gilchrist, Lara, Murali, Graeme Smith, Sehwag, Wasim Akram and plenty others. It’s their Twenty20 payday, in the Masters Champions League, the latest Twenty20 tournament to strut on to the calendar with outfits named by the Ministry of Silly Teams. Here sides are labelled after star signs, the Libra Legends, Sagittarius Strikers and so on. Sadly, you don’t have to have been born a Libran to qualify for the Legends. You are, though, supposed to be retired and here is where it becomes as blurred as facing Brett Lee at the Waca. Lee is now a Virgo Super King.

The event was blessed by the ICC on account of it being solely for retired players. That’s all well and good with Hamilton and his one-time team-mates. But among the 90 players auctioned off to the six teams some are not quite as retired as others. Take Shaun Tait, an Aquarian supposed to be playing for Libra. Tait shone in the Big Bash, earning a recall to the Australian Twenty20 squad so, now not being retired in any way, he has pulled out of the Masters.

The Pakistan and West Indies cricket boards have raised concerns with the ICC over the involvement of some of their players. The PCB is particularly irked because Abdul Razzaq, a Sagittarian playing for Paul Collingwood’s Capricorn Commanders, has been a leading face in promoting the Pakistan Super League. The new PSL, featuring Tait, begins next month, using the same Dubai and Sharjah venues as the Masters. If Twenty20 is cricket’s golden egg it is being scrambled, fried, boiled and poached in the Middle East.

“Teething issues,” suggests Zafar Shah, the hotel magnate behind the Masters. Shah is a rich man, whose life, according to Wikipedia, has taken him on a “journey beyond his dreams”. His entry was possibly written by someone not unconnected to Mr Shah, who has also dabbled in Bollywood.

The Masters is planned by Shah to be a 10-year journey, by which time the old masters will be exhausted, Lara will be 56 and Darren Gough’s fast-bowler’s bottom – the key to any decent paceman’s make-up according to Ray Illingworth – will be wider than Jan Molby. For the players it is a bit of fun, and a chance to earn some cash. Through history sportsmen have been playthings of rich people and who can really blame either of them? But why would the mass TV audience this needs to succeed bother tuning in?

In Britain, where sporting roots run deep into cities, towns and communities, contrived sporting events are too easily sniffed at. You can’t just make up a team, can you? While India and Australia have picked up England’s Twenty20 idea and run with it, the ECB is still sucking on its pencils. City franchises have to be the way ahead – the Big Bash is a fine thing and part of its success is the atmosphere created by big crowds filling big grounds in big cities. It’s fun. But it’s also meaningfully competitive and full of fine cricketers, adept at playing a new(ish) game that demands new skills. The fielding is breathtaking with Jonty clones everywhere you look. In other words, today’s Jonty Rhodes, new improved Jontys.

The Masters is a Twenty20 too far. If you live in the Gulf, why choose it ahead of the PSL, where you could watch Kevin Pietersen or Chris Gayle or plenty other current internationals? Or even Sam Billings, one of England’s bright young things who executes shots that Vaughan never did and never will. The Masters can’t match the youngsters at Twenty20.

If you’re watching on TV – it’s broadcast by the company that shows the IPL – and you want to see Vaughan at his best, turn off the Masters and go to YouTube. Watch his exquisite strokeplay against Australia in 2003. Or watch one of Lara’s great innings, or even look up Gavin Hamilton and see him scoring more runs than any Englishman at the 1999 World Cup. Relive them doing it when it mattered, and they mattered, because sport has to matter for it to mean something, for it truly to capture the audience it needs to survive.