It was some years ago when April 1st fell on a Saturday. On "Grandstand" – BBC TV's sports programme – it was decided to mark the occasion by mounting an elaborate hoax featuring cricket. Consequently, I was despatched to the Sussex county ground to film the action that went towards making a programme item that was realistic enough to fool a lot of people.

The basis of it was that so many Championship matches finished early, making it difficult for commercial departments to sell the last day to corporate sponsors who could not be sure of having any cricket to put before their clients and guests. To counter this, there was to be a 20-over competition played when the "real" game finished before schedule.

The pitch was to be lengthened to 24 yards in order to negate fast bowling, there were runs deducted if a batsman played out a maiden over, two instances of "one hand, one bounce" meant that the batsman was out, and there were only 30 seconds available for the batsman to get to the middle at the fall of a wicket before he could be timed out. There were innovative umpiring signals introduced to cover the new decisions, while the officials had the power to send players to a sin-bin for bad behaviour.

We filmed a demonstration match performed (and that is the correct word!) by the Sussex players, and conducted interviews with all and sundry. Paul Parker, the Sussex captain at the time, had to have several goes at his interview because he could not keep a straight face, while coach Norman Gifford and commercial manager Jim Parks gave considered views on the impact of the new competition.

To give some scarcely-needed credibility to the whole thing, we conducted an interview with the retiring marketing manager of the then Test and County Cricket Board, Peter Lush, who, unprompted, came out with a marvellous line about this new competition being the way to promote cricket to the American market.

As an April Fool, it was a huge success. Viewers wrote in to complain about the further ruination of the game, and several people made a point of conveying their distaste for the idea to me personally. I can clearly remember watching the piece go out and saying to the assembled company in the studio: "I just hope the TCCB weren't watching or they'll try to implement it!"

The years have rolled by and the TCCB has given way to the England and Wales Cricket Board, whose First-Class Forum have just announced that, as from the 2003 season, there will be – yes, you've guessed it – a 20-over-a-side competition in the schedule of matches.

The "innovations" that we introduced all those years ago will not be in use. The quite admirable aim of the competition, as described by chief executive Tim Lamb is to introduce "another very positive development for the future of cricket in this country. It's essential that we reach out and appeal to a new generation of young cricket followers, and this new competition is designed to do exactly that."

All we can hope is that it achieves its aim and brings in that new generation of cricket enthusiasts and they, in turn, grow to like the real thing. Nobody can doubt the sincerity of the intention; we must just hope that it is not the game itself that is being made to wear the hat with the bells.

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