Jos Buttler: Twenty20 could become cricket's only format sooner rather than later

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Stand-in England Twenty20 captain Jos Buttler sees cricket becoming a "one format game" which is bad news for test enthusiasts.

You could be forgiven for thinking cricket's already gone down the one-format route, with the Black Caps amid an unprecedented run of Twenty20 internationals.

Stand-in England skipper Jos Buttler, a power-hitting poster boy for T20, believes that day may not be as far away as people think.

"I feel cricket could become a one-format game in the future - whether that's soon or in 15 to 20 years," Buttler told Sky Sports in the UK.

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New Zealand captain Kane Williamson acknowledged the hold Twenty20 cricket has on the world game when he said he wanted to keep juggling all three formats.

"Test cricket is still, for me, the pinnacle of cricket but T20 fills out stadiums and is easy to keep up with and follow. Everyone wants things faster these days and things evolve so maybe Twenty20 could have a monopoly on cricket."

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That's inevitable for some, and a terrifying thought for other cricket fans.

Buttler said it would be sad if test cricket - "a complete test of everything" - disappeared but the strength of T20 can't be ignored. It's a bonanza for Buttler and other high profile players: his hefty retainer and match fees from with England are topped up by one-off T20 league contracts and he fetched a price of $945,000 at the Indian Premier League auction from Rajasthan Royals.

New Zealand Cricket is gripped by T20, too, scheduling 10 T20 internationals this home summer including a tri-series final at Auckland's Eden Park next Wednesday. England and the Black Caps are already in a race to join Australia in the decider, and for a quick boost to NZC's balance sheet it makes perfect sense squeezing all it can out of the most popular format against two crowd-pulling rivals.

But with limited context, T20 internationals can fast become too much of a good thing, each match easily forgotten as teams move onto the next destination.

England's tour gets serious with a five-match ODI series and just two tests to end the summer. That balance seems skewed, too, and a three-three split, as happened with South Africa a year ago, would be more palatable for cricket purists. Two-test series (and just four home tests per New Zealand summer) will become the norm for countries outside the Big Three as the International Cricket Council adopts the test championship from 2019.