To those of us who regard the end of September as the start of purgatory because cricket has left these shores for the duration of a long, dark winter, there is yet some hope. This weekend, despite the calendar showing it to be most definitely October, some of the top names in world cricket will be performing in Cardiff.

The event is the Power Cricket weekend with matches in the Millennium Stadium Cardiff under the lights and under the roof. Matches are to be played on Friday and Saturday between "The Brits" and the Rest of the World. The home side will be led by Nasser Hussain while Stephen Fleming of New Zealand is in charge of the Rest.

Power Cricket is a shortened form of the game designed to be played in a confined space. There have been plenty of similar experiments with teams playing on artificial pitches under lights in the middle of a football stadium. In general, they have not worked. The weather has seldom been in their favour, while the continual dot, four, six, wicket format tends to become more than a little repetitive.

In this instance the roof will mean that the weather cannot interfere, while the organisers have come up with a novel format to add interest to the proceedings. It is not enough to clear the perimeter of the playing area. The run tariff for each shot will be determined by the part of the stadium in to which the ball is hit. There will, therefore, be more runs scored for a shot that lands in the upper tier of seating to one that merely limps over the boundary.

The Millennium Stadium might not be Colonial Park in Melbourne, where it is large enough to hold fully-fledged one-day internationals under cover, but this is about the best we can offer in this country. And there is no doubting the quality of players attracted to the idea of 30 overs a side split into two sessions of 15 overs.

For the Brits, only the Kent pair of David Fulton and Martin Saggers have not appeared in international cricket. The Rest of the World is made up with five Pakistanis, three New Zealanders, three Sri Lankans, two Indians, a West Indian and a Zimbabwean, to say nothing of a Dane.

The matches are expected to last about five hours with pre-match entertainment designed to appeal to a new type of cricket fan rather than necessarily the traditional follower of the game. The cricket itself starts at 5pm on Friday, and there is a number for the Ticket Hotline: 08705 582582. Whatever the outcome and however well this version of the game is received, it at least pushes the start of winter back into October.

© CricInfo