A puff of white smoke may not have been seen pouring out of a chimney at Lord's yesterday, after the International Cricket Council announced its vision for the future, but clearly a new era is upon the game.

The ICC Offices at Lord's Photo CricInfo

The ICC, and its Australian hierarchy, has set its sights on skipping the 20th Century and emerging from its Victorian-like cloak of self-imposed importance, yet seeming impotence, into the 21st Century as a big player among the sports administrations of the world.

If this plan is successfully adopted by the sport's member nations at their meeting in Malaysia later this month, the last vestiges of colonialism will have been shaken from the governance of cricket and it will be time to get on with the real business of running the game.

Greater power to control the sport in the world has long been a requirement for the continued development of cricket and, by its statement, the ICC has clearly formalised its commitment.

The sheer notion of transparency and accountability is revolutionary enough on its own.

But add in, innovation, strategy, relevance and commerciality, and we are talking a whole new ball game.

While wanting to compete on an equal footing with other quickly developing sports, the ICC intends to defend and promote cricket's traditions and history.

Rather like an act of contrition, the game's minders have admitted to past wrongdoings in the secrecy in which they did business, and ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed has announced that body fails to be accountable at its peril.

Whole dusty compartments of the game are to be given an overdue shake-up. If part of the intention for that is to develop a greater respect for the traditions of cricket and its history, then it will be a welcome initiative.

It would be nice to think that cricket has nothing to be ashamed of but the corruption saga of the last decade put paid to that.

However, the ICC has attempted to right that momentary blip on its existence scanner. Its actions over the next decade will tell how successful that has been and just what a mark the stain has left on the history of the game.

Once it dawned on the international body that it needed greater control over the national bodies, it was never going to be hard to work out a formula for advancement.

Getting to this stage is a triumph in itself.

Getting this plan through the meeting in Malaysia will be another, and greater, triumph.

Failure to achieve that doesn't bear thinking about.

One interesting note to emerge from the presentation in London on Monday was the apparent attempt to rid the game of sledging.

Those, notably Shane Warne, who claim New Zealand are the uncrowned kings of the art will no doubt be thankful for that.

But if the protection of the tradition and history of the game is one of the goals of this policy, what are the after-dinner speakers of the future going to have to talk about?

Equally, but much more seriously, the efforts to get batsmen to 'walk' in a more outward appreciation of fair play has to be in the "best of luck" category.

Money, and incentives to perform, strike at the very heart of this honourable, but quaint notion. Too much rests on a player's results for this to be seriously entertained.

A batsman's inclination to adopt an attitude of swings and roundabouts when it comes to wrongful dismissals by umpires, or their wrongful decisions, might be promoted by having a super-class of umpires controlling games, but the notion of not 'walking' is so ingrained it is likely to be a generation or two of batsmen before it becomes a common occurrence, if it ever does achieve that status.

Any move by the ICC to seal its place among the leading sports in the world has to be welcomed.

Any initiative to be more accountable to the shareholders of the game is worthwhile.

The breadth of change, and its fast pace, is unprecedented.

Cynics might wonder if it is all a dream and curse the weight of the Alice in Wonderland tome on their chest that has caused them to wake up.

But, in reality, cricket can't afford for it to be a dream.

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