The times, it seems, are a-changin'. And 40 years after the man with a guitar and the, ahem, "distinctive" nasal singing voice, English cricket may be ready to catch up.

Derided as a soulless gimmick, another unhealthy dose of fast-food culture, Twenty20 has been an unprecedented success. The quality of cricket may be a matter of argument but that it has comprehensively succeeded in its primary aim cannot be.

Twenty20 has proved to be popular beyond the ECB's wildest dreams, reaching parts never reached before. With a welcome blend of the young, mothers happy to spend a couple of hours in the sunshine, office workers wanting a few beers after their nine-to-five, the faintly curious, all mixed in with the usual set of astonishingly loyal county cricket diehards, the results have been staggering.

6,000 at Beckenham...4,500 at Northampton...9,000 at Headingley....16,000 at Old Trafford...9,000 at the Oval...10,500 at Cardiff...5,000 at Leicester...

It may not cricket as we know it, but all these people can't be wrong, can they?

Even the hidebound purists and critics should be pleased, nay, relieved, that it has succeeded. For if Twenty20 didn't succeed in getting new bums on seats, then what would? Where could county cricket go - except, of course, 'go under' - if this didn't work? Little wonder that the clubs and the players embraced the new competition so enthusiastically.

But conversely, such has been Twenty20's success, the phrase 'what now?' is one that English cricket chiefs are just as likely to be asking before - and during - the meeting in Northampton at the end of July in which they determine the shape of the 2004 fixture calendar.

"There is a mood for change," Steve Coverdale, the chair of the Northampton meeting, told the Sunday Times. "We often put our goods on sale when people can't buy. When is the best time to stage matches? We've got to be radical. Everything is up for grabs."

In short, the shape of English cricket will - at last - switch emphasis towards, first and foremost, catering for potential punters.

A month or more of Twenty20 next season is now a near-certainty. It's a no-brainer to extend county cricket's most (only?) profit-making format.

More matches may indeed do damage to techniques in a way that a two-week format, despite the critics' laments, was never going to. That, though, will be dismissed as a necessary evil, and besides the theory is that top-class players can adapt their techniques as and when. The Aussies do reasonably well in both of the (current) forms of international cricket, don't they?

There's also a growing belief that Twenty20 will only serve to improve standards of fielding (a crucial factor in the new-look England's recent series win over Pakistan), force one-dimensional bowlers to at least double their repertoire or face the consequences, and, judging by the scoring patterns, convince batsman that slogging from ball one isn't the smart play. Wickets in hand, and batsman rather than tailenders, are the essential ingredients to taking advantage of the final overs and building a match-winning total.

Meanwhile, with those beer-guzzling office workers in mind, we can also expect Twenty20 matches to be given a standardised time of 6pm. And the ECB and chums may consider it a good idea to schedule Twenty20 matches during the school holidays next year, too...

Next on the agenda at the Northampton meeting will be the trickier challenge of persuading the new converts to attend non-Twenty20 matches.

To that end, it's a reasonable expectation that night cricket will figure large on the new calendar. Friday night cricket, in particular, should suit cricket's new wave of after-workers and homework-avoiders.

Oh, and if you're a county cricketer, don't plan on spending too much time at weekends with your family. A return to the old days of National League matches being scheduled in-between the completion of championship ties, be it on the Friday, Saturday or Sunday, is also on the cards. Or maybe they'll go the whole hog and set weekends aside for just one-day cricket...

Yet these could be far from being the most radical changes. "We should also look at lunch and tea intervals," says Coverdale. "Are they sacrosanct?"

Perhaps. Perhaps not...

And it seems the clamour for change is infectious.

Earlier this week Duncan Fletcher put forward his plan for making Test matches more exciting when he advocated making matches last four days of 100 overs each where both teams would be allowed to bat a maximum of 200 overs in two innings.

Nor can it be long before a Twenty20 international series is proposed. It might sound unlikely, but then again, just a few years ago the prospect of putting Test cricket on the backburner for a month at the height of the English summer while one-day international took centre-stage seemed impossible.

The times really might be changing...and the face of English cricket may very soon become unrecognisable.

By Pete Gill