Entering the seventh season of the Big Bash League, a confession on behalf of those who prefer their "maximums" signalled by the umpire rather than a pyrotechnician.

The BBL has not yet destroyed cricket as we know it.

In fact — take your heart medicine, settle into the Chesterfield recliner and take deep breaths my Test-loving brethren — the BBL might be the best thing to have happened to long-form cricket since Fred "The Demon" Spofforth last waxed his moustache.

First, the ways the BBL has NOT turned cricket into some grotesque fusion of baseball, jelly wrestling and monster truck driving as we had feared.

A format we envisaged would be more suitable to showground woodchoppers than orthodox batsman has NOT destroyed the techniques of a generation of first-class stars.

Shane Watson got the 2017/18 BBL season off to a flying start on Tuesday. ( AAP: David Moir )

Australian batting guru Trent Woodhill might once have been cast as the Dr Kevorkian of cricket by traditionalists given his advocacy of free-form batting, and his involvement in various T20 competitions.

But given Woodhill's students include Steve Smith, who fidgets like Rafael Nadal, moves sideways before going forward, flourishes his bat like a lightsabre and is still currently scoring Test runs at a Bradmanesque rate, we can hardly say his methods are only fit for T20 sloggers.

"I still think orthodox is the way forward," Woodhill says, who hasn't done much damage to the first-class careers of David Warner, Virat Kohli, Ellyse Perry and many other cross-format stars with whom he has worked.

Woodhill compares changes in batting to the evolution of swimming.

"If we compare the 1984 Olympic 100 metres men's final to the 2016 final, in 1984, everybody looked the same on top and below the water. In 2016 everyone looked different above, but the same below," he said.

"Some things you need to do to be successful, such as watching the ball moving and playing late to maximise power and timing. How you arrive at that point varies."

Similarly, the BBL has NOT destroyed bowling. Our fears it would create a generation of pie-throwing ball machines have proven ill-founded on the evidence produced by this season's lethal Australian pace attack.

Close finishes and thrilling climaxes have become a hallmark of the Big Bash. ( AAP: Darren England )

Meanwhile, the spin bowlers we feared would be made redundant by BBL cavemen wielding sponsored planks have instead had their craft elevated and, in the case of quadragenarian tweaker Brad Hogg, their careers extended. "Spin to win" is the new BBL mantra.

About the worst we can say is that the BBL has bumped the Sheffield Shield from its place in the summer schedule, creating a hiatus that might have been damaging had Australia needed reinforcements during the Ashes.

As it was, the selectors had three first class games to make their decisions. And does anybody want to second guess what they concluded using that evidence or, in the case of Tim Paine, by ignoring it altogether?

So if the BBL has not destroyed Proper Cricket, how is it contributing to its long-term health?

Let me take you to the nets at any local cricket club in an area with a strong, family-oriented demographic. There you will find children from traditional cricket backgrounds have been joined by a throng of neophytes; kids who would have taken up BMX riding or still be on the couch clutching the PlayStation controller if not for the BBL.

These entry-level kids help pad Cricket Australia's coveted "biggest participation sport in Australia" statistics. But, as sporting day-trippers, they are also likely to abandon the game after a season or two if cricket does not do everything in its power to keep them.

The public has been excitedly following Australia successful Ashes campaign. ( Reuters: David Gray )

Thus the implementation of Cricket Australia's "controversial new junior formats", which are only really controversial to those unfamiliar with the urgent need to engage spoilt-for-choice children while the game has them in its thrall.

The headline-grabbing take from the new juniors formats was, "You can't go out for a duck", an allusion to a rule in the lowest age games whereby a team loses five runs if a wicket falls and the bowler is credited with that wicket but the batter continues on for his allotted time.

Some former players claimed "making a duck builds resilience." Never mind they had spent their junior careers pummelling less-talented kids with bat and ball and rarely suffered these supposedly character-building failures.

This argument completely missed the greater point that BBL-era newbies would not stay in cricket very long if they spent hours on the sidelines watching kids tutored in the nets by cricket-loving families and friends.

So how does the BBL participation boom help Test cricket? The longer you keep these kids playing cricket, the more they will appreciate the nuances of the game.

The WBBL is offering a new avenue for female cricketers to make a name for themselves. ( AAP: Craig Golding )

Learn to bat for six overs and you appreciate what it takes for Steve Smith to bat for six hours. Try to bowl consistent line and length on a full pitch and the wonder of what Nathan Lyon does on the same 22 yards is even greater.

The number of kids at my club who only knew the BBL two years ago, but are now interested in, and even want to attend Test match cricket — admittedly, with a bucket on their head — is heartening.

This doesn't mean we traditionalists have to watch the BBL, assuming we can prise the remote control from the hands of our Lynn-sane children.

But in five or 10 years, when a legion of all-format cricket viewers, club players and even the odd Test star have emerged from the BBL generation, we should give grudging praise.