Maybe only a handful of people have witnessed both the launch of 20-over city cricket in India this weekend and the start of the previous major chapter in cricket’s history on Nov 27, 1979, when, following Kerry Packer’s revolution, Australia played West Indies in the first day/night international. And as one of the lucky few who can make the comparison, I believe that whereas it was immediately apparent the earlier experiment had a winning formula, the Indian Premier League will need major surgery to survive.

On that afternoon a generation ago the old Sydney pavilion was empty as the members stayed away, at first, while the rest of the ground was flooded by the general public who were finally being given what they wanted: a game of limited duration, at a time to suit them, not the leisured elite, between their national team and the best opposition, with a bit of music and a lot of alcohol in hot weather.

This weekend, in India, has seen some stunning spectacles. Never has there been such a build-up to a cricket match as there was in Bangalore on Friday evening. Almost two hours before the start, 55,000 people had packed into Chinnaswamy stadium to see a son et lumiere (et chanson) that was dazzling, a fusion of east and west at its best, full of pulsating music and white-clad figures walking on stilts or abseiling from the roofs of the stadium, which were then blown off - or so it sounded - by fireworks and another pyrotechnic display from Brendon McCullum, all on an evening of humid heat.

Last evening in Delhi saw Glenn McGrath bowling almost as well as ever at the age of 38, still impossible to hit; and after his mean opening spell the batting of Rajasthan Royals, playing only three foreigners, went from weakness to weakness, much to the displeasure of their captain Shane Warne.

There was a shrewd bit of marketing, too, at the opening ceremony in Bangalore when the captains of the eight franchises all signed the Spirit of Cricket declaration. It demonstrated how the brains behind the IPL have a feel for the moment, after everyone had become sick at the needless on-field aggression which culminated in January in the ‘Bollyline’ incident in Australia and the confrontation between Andrew Symonds and Harbhajan Singh.

But the organisers of the IPL seem, at this stage, to have missed a couple of tricks - and they could prove extremely, perhaps terminally, damaging. Yesterday, sandwiched between the successes in Bangalore and Delhi, came a match in Mohali in front of a stadium that was half-full - a match which saw a superb century by Mike Hussey set up a 33-run victory for the Chennai Super Kings.

The first drawback is that too many unremarkable Indian cricketers are making up the numbers: a problem which can be solved either by reducing the number of franchises (impossible in the short term) or increasing the quota of foreign players from the existing four-per-side. Indian spectators and television audiences want to see stars, whether in films or on the cricket field. It was a point made last year when India staged 20-over matches between state sides, and the country became the only place in the world where the format did not take off. The second point is the IPL organisers are asking too much of fans in expecting them to exchange old instincts for new loyalties.

Cricket followers here have always been as nationalistic as anywhere else: the stock image is of a car being driven to a one-day match involving India, horn blaring, with young men leaning out of the windows and waving their national flags.

Walking round the stadium in Bangalore before and after the match, I saw a single flag - an Indian flag - and that was furled. The vast majority of spectators were in their twenties and thirties, about 15 per cent female, almost everyone dressed in jeans or slacks and T-shirts, wearing or carrying nothing more, illustrating their social mobility. And they were being asked to support a cosmopolitan team, representing their city, in which only a couple of players - notably Bangalore’s ‘icon’ player, the captain Rahul Dravid - could be described as local.