An IPL contract.

A double-sided bat sponsorship.

An Australian spot.

An 89 off 43 on debut.

No first-class games.

David Warner is his name.

Warner went from club cricketer, to state player, to IPL player, to Australian player in two months.

That is quicker than his innings.

The Australian selectors should be applauded for picking him from nowhere.

Twenty20 cricket creates overnight sensations at a rapid rate, and it feeds the wallets almost as fast.

13 months ago Shaun Marsh was only known because he had a famous father. He then broke out in the Australian domestic Twenty20 competition. That got him a ticket to the IPL, where he was the batsman-of-the-tournament. Now he opens the batting for Australia in one day cricket, and can expect to earn a minimum of $1m this year.

I arrived in England just after Graham Napier’s heroics. For a moment I thought he was a reincarnation of Jesus, it turns out he is a useful bowler who can slog. You can follow his career on grahamnapier.com, where you can find out what country he is playing in at the moment (New Zealand, he was in Hong Kong before that).

Sohail Tanvir was picked for Pakistan after Wasim Akram sung his praises. In Pakistani first class cricket he was a modest batting allrounder. His wrong-foot action made him almost impossible to get away in Twenty20 cricket, and he is now a globetrotting Twenty20 bowling allrounder who finds himself in Adelaide.

MS Dhoni was struggling to keep Dinesh Kartik out of the side 18 months ago. Then he won the Twenty20 World Cup (or whatever it was called) as captain, was runner-up in the IPL, and now he captains his country in all forms of the game.

As part of Stanford’s vanity project, a New York real-estate agent named Lennox Cush was part of the squad. He didn’t play, but he did go home a far richer man. Lucky bugger.

10 years ago when you were listening to OK Computer, time travelling in the legend of Zelda and talking around water-coolers about Friends, did you really think that this was the direction cricket would take?

Jrod is an Australian cricket blogger, his site Cricketwithballs.net won July’s Best of Blogs in TWC