A few years back the former boss of Barclays, Bob Diamond, gave a masterclass in how not to appear before a Commons select committee. He turned up in an electric green tie that almost strobed on screen. He wittered on about himself. He patronised his interrogators. And he had no conception of convincing denial about whatever scandal it was that Barclays had got themselves into at the time. He was a disaster.

The England and Wales Cricket Board, which appears to have a much larger bureaucracy than any piddling bank, did not make these mistakes. Led by the chairman, Colin Graves, and Tom Harrison, the suave chief executive, they did it right. They were respectful and courteous. They exhausted the thesaurus with adulatory synonyms about their own achievements – “phenomenal” was the favourite. And they swerved the difficult questions with practised skill. It was so cleverly done that one suspects the gent with an MCC handkerchief in his top pocket sitting behind Graves was in fact an ECB plant to illustrate the enemy.

Almost nothing their three-man team said made any sense whatever – their teammate Clare Connor, talking about the growth of women’s cricket, was much more credible. But it didn’t matter. Parliament is full of cricket enthusiasts, several of them on the panel at the culture select committee on Wednesday. (The ECB, in contrast, specialise in politicians.) The MPs do not like to think badly of a game they love and were over-respectful in return.

And they were not well enough briefed to get behind the bland evasions to reach the nub of what every sane person in cricket knows (even those who dare not say it) – that the ECB’s strategy of forcing their new hyped-up contest The Hundred on an unwilling game is completely incoherent, staggeringly expensive and potentially disastrous.

This point was made later by Andy Nash, the former chairman of Somerset and ECB member, who has resigned and gone rogue. Nash described the project as a “reckless gamble”. A public debate between Nash and Graves would have been worth hearing but it did not happen.

Nonetheless, this was a far more edifying occasion than The Daft – sorry Draft – the Sky programme shown on Sunday night when players were allocated between the eight new teams, all of them deeply rooted in the ECB marketing department. In style, it was aimed at the nine-year-olds who are the alleged target audience.

But they would have been the kind of nine-year-olds who speculate on the bitcoin market. This had nothing to do with cricket and everything to do with money. Not the money English cricket might make to develop the game but the millions it is spaffing on coaches (almost all foreign) and players (mostly not).

For them it’s bonanza time. And the homegrown chosen ones will become a new rich elite of 100-ball and Twenty20 specialists, playing in the selected big cities, leaving behind a load of poor saps playing the 50-over and four-day cricket that produces World Cup and Ashes wins. Screw all that.

Sky is not to blame for this. It loves long games to fill its infinite airtime. The whole Hundred concept appears to derive from a bizarre coalition between the board and, of all people, the BBC, which has bought 10 games, men’s and women’s, on the understanding they will not exceed a three-hour slot, which Twenty20 usually does.

The ECB are now so guilty about the original decision to remove the game from mainstream TV 14 years ago they have absurdly convinced themselves this pathetic allocation will somehow create a new cricketing generation, even though most will still be barred from seeing anything of consequence. And the BBC, its portfolio of live sport now largely empty, is gleefully cooperating.

Lord Patel of Bradford (left), Colin Graves, Tom Harrison and Clare Connor prepare to answer a Commons select committee’s questions on the future of English cricket. Photograph: parliamentlive.tv

There was one telling moment at Westminster. It came from Lord Patel, the ECB’s senior non-executive director. Asked why the professional game was unrepresented on the board he replied: “My experience of having representative committees has always been that it doesn’t produce the best outcomes.”

Oh, I know. The boss of the Chinese Communist party was saying just the same to me the other day. That tedious democracy stuff, it’s so 20th century. Much better to leave things to people who know best, like Lord Patel.

There were good ways to move this game forward. The know-alls bet everything on a bad one. Nash hinted that the first-class counties were now considering plans to regain control of their own destiny. But that is two years and hundreds of millions too late.

From here, there are only two outcomes. Either The Hundred flops and cricket is plunged into an unprecedented financial crisis. Or it can be painted as a success (stand by for free tickets) and the much-loved sport on which it is loosely based will wither into something as relevant as knur and spell. Completely subordinate to made-up teams playing a made-up game to sell junk food to children. Me, I hope it rains solidly for the next four Augusts.