The cream is rising to the top

Last year, the Twenty20 Cup received the best start in life imaginable, as it was blessed with some of the finest cricket-watching weather in living memory. This year, however, the gods have not been quite so lenient: yesterday the bandwagon was halted by two complete washouts, which is two more than in the whole of 2003. When Chelmsford is being battered by weather that would disgrace a mid-February football match, not even the prospect of beach parties and cheerleaders can persuade the crowds to linger.

But so what if the honeymoon is over? Twenty20's novelty factor was bound to wear off at some stage (or, in this case, get washed away). The acid test was always going to be its viability as a sporting contest. And in that respect, like the strongest marriages, it looks set to hold its own through the rough times and the smooth. As Robert Croft put it, after Glamorgan's thrilling victory over Somerset on Monday, the players' intensity has gone up a notch this season. At first, the Cup was seen as a bit of a charity bash, but now it is being accepted as a grown-up member of the domestic season, and the standards (and the scores) have sky-rocketed as a result.

Of course, some sides have treated the competition with deadly seriousness all along. Last season, Surrey were recognised as the most professional team in the country, and Gloucestershire were regarded as the best exponents of one-day cricket. It was no surprise, therefore, that both teams made it to the inaugural finals day at Trent Bridge where, by a stroke of misfortune, they were drawn to face each other in the semis. It was Surrey who prevailed that day, and it was they who trampled over Warwickshire in a one-sided final.

Now that the pack has made up the lost ground, there is no holding the game back. Last year, only two sides exceeded 200 all tournament. In Wednesday's nailbiter at Nottingham, both sides did exactly that in the same match. Last year, Gloucestershire's Ian Harvey managed the tournament's only century. This time, it has taken less than a week for three batsmen to sail past the three-figure mark, and two others have reached the nineties as well. Admittedly, it is not a pleasant fortnight to be a bowler, although it was ever thus in one-day cricket, and as Durham's Neil Killeen will testify with his figures of 4 from 7 in four overs, every now and then the bat is sure to come a cropper.

Your average purist would argue that runs without context are about as pleasant as ... well, a dose of the runs. But a quick glance at the batting figures will confirm that it has not been the tuppenny-bit sloggers who have been ruling this show. After two matches each, seven batsmen have now reached 100 runs. Four of these have played international cricket for England, a fifth would have done had he not, after much deliberation, declared himself a "fair-dinkum Aussie", and as for the other two - Yorkshire's Matthew Wood and Glamorgan's Ian Thomas - well, who's to say they won't?

But, with apologies to the man-mountain Andrew Symonds and his 34-ball hundred, two names stand out above all others this year - Graeme Hick and Mark Ramprakash, two of county cricket's most indefatigable performers, who made their Test debuts together at Headingley way back in 1991, and who, between them, have now amassed more than 60,000 first-class runs and nearly 200 first-class centuries. In the enforced absence of England's one-day players, Hick and Ramps are the seal of approval that this fledgling tournament has needed.

If it was assumed that the Twenty20 Cup would be a young man's game, then think again. In Hick's case, his success is no great surprise. He missed the 2003 tournament with a broken hand, and with his emphasis on power-play, he was always odds-on to make up for lost time in style. Ramprakash, on the other hand, has been a relevation, and he is perhaps the best example of the cathartic qualities that Twenty20 cricket can bring to bear.

When he is at the top of his considerable game, few cricketers in history have stroked the ball with such finesse as Ramprakash. As a consequence, few players could have been less likely contenders for Twenty20 plaudits, and so it proved last year, when he tiptoed his way to 102 rather diffident runs in seven innings. This year, however, Ramps has allowed himself the fullest freedom of expression - fuller than perhaps he really believed feasible. After opening his account with a relatively sedate 46 from 31 balls against Sussex, he then went ballistic against Hampshire, smacking seven sixes in an unbeaten 76 from 42 balls. For once, he was earning his nickname "Bloodaxe" for his on-field activities, rather than his off-field fretting.

With those innings in mind, one can't help wondering how much Ramprakash might have benefited from an encounter with Twenty20 cricket at an earlier stage of his career. He has always had the shots, but too often in his Test outings he was fearful of displaying them. At the nadir of his career, at Johannesburg in 1995-96, he adopted an overly defensive mindset in the first innings, and a recklessly attacking one in the second, and returned scores of 4 and 0. "His intensity has simply proved unsuited to Test cricket," wrote Christopher Martin-Jenkins. "It is a tragedy for him and a pity for us all."

Johannesburg was, of course, the scene of Mike Atherton's ten-and-a-half-hour rearguard, where the situation of the match could not have been further removed from the requirements of a Twenty20 game. And yet, that universal truth of batting - "one slip and you're gone" - applies equally to both codes. The same question of shot-selection that let Ramprakash down at Jo'burg has served him admirably at Twenty20 level this season.

If it's a question of training your instincts to adapt to the requirements, then Twenty20 cricket could be every bit as important to a player's allround development as technique and temperament. In the truncated game, the fear of failure is virtually eliminated, which means the rewards for sensible aggression are all the greater, as we have been witnessing in spades this week. Fifty-over cricket, on the other hand, falls between the two extremes, as England conveniently demonstrated in their muddled defeat at Lord's on Tuesday.

For 20 tortuous overs against West Indies, England creaked to 59 for 3, with three of the country's most free-scoring batsmen, Marcus Trescothick, Michael Vaughan and Robert Key hamstrung by the need to survive, as well as push the score along. In that free-flowing finale, by contrast, Andrew Flintoff and Andrew Strauss belted a further 184, with their minds uncluttered of such niceties. But, as if to emphasise the level to which Twenty20 cricket has been taken this season, that sort of total on its own would have been little better than par.

There is, of course, a silver lining to England's early exit from the NatWest Series. It has allowed several of the squad the chance to return to their counties and get a feel for the new format. The fortunes of Flintoff and Trescothick will be particularly closely monitored, and don't be surprised if they serve up an innings or two to remember. For the cream is rising to the top in Twenty20 cricket, and it is no coincidence.