Welcome to the strange, shrinking world of sport.

Whether it is cricket, rugby or football that grabs your interest, prepare yourself for a mini-revolution.

Cricket’s 12th World Cup – a 50-overs-a-side jamboree that involves ten nations and will last more than a month – gets under way this week.

It will be full of big hits and excitement to spare with England starting out as favourites. There is even talk that they might hit some poor bowlers for 500 runs.

But is 50 overs too long for you? Then how about 20-overs a side? We have already got a World Cup for that but it clearly takes up far too much time.

So the powers that be have decided to knock off 20 balls for each team and bring in The Hundred. There will be eight teams of mercenaries dotted around the country, a few more gimmicks to entertain the vast crowds they are expecting, and this will have about as much connection with proper cricket as baseball. Real cricket supporters will still prefer Test matches.

Rugby union already has its Sevens festivals touring such places as Hong Kong and Dubai as well as all rugby strongholds across the globe. It is quite a crowd pleaser, apparently.

But it is not to everybody’s taste so let’s try another idea. How about five-a-side, played across half a pitch and lasting only ten minutes? This has already been given air and press time and has every chance of making an appearance in the future.

The only consolation for men and ladies of regular size… this will be no place for 20-stone giants to knock lumps off each other. But from 15 (22 if you count the subs) down to five is surely one downsizing too far.

Rugby league is due to hold a nine-a-side World Event later this year, having trialled the format in the past. Nobody got too excited but that hasn’t put off the organisers.

Football already has small game versions of five or six in a team so short of further team sizes there is nothing much the game can do to embrace the shrinking world of sport.

Except that there has been a suggestion put forward to benefit the booming ladies branch of football.

It came from a former England international – make the goals smaller to reflect the physical stature of the players.

Now, where did I put those Subbuteo teams?

*How do you put a value on a football match? Easy. Just think of as many millions as you like, add a few and you won’t be far wrong.

The game’s finances will forever remain a mystery to most of us when the amount of cash (£30m) needed to rescue the country’s steel industry and save some 5,000 jobs will just about get you a half-decent full back to fill a Premier League shirt.

Or, closer to the point, the winners of a match between two ‘second tier’ clubs will pocket twice the amount the Champions of Europe will collect.

Figures released over the weekend revealed that yesterday’s Championship play-off final between Aston Villa and Derby County was worth £170 million to the winners. And that’s only for starters.

Add on the extras from what promotion to the Premier League means in sponsorship, TV deals, bigger crowds and higher prices and even that figure soars. When Huddersfield went up in 2017 they could, according to estimates, add on another £100 million-plus to that figure.

Liverpool and Tottenham travel out to Madrid for the Champions League final on Saturday.

Prize money for the winners is not exactly small change, but the fact is that it is slightly more than half of that collected by the winners at Wembley.

In the meantime, treble-winning Manchester City are in talks to double the salary of their German international Leroy Sane to keep him out of the clutches of Bayern Munich. Cheap at £150,000 a week.

And all this while they are having hassle with UEFA over Financial Fair Play rules.

*Victories don’t come along too often for Barrow Raiders fans so perhaps they have forgotten how to enjoy the moment when they do.

On the way into Craven Park on Sunday, much of the talk was along the lines of “if we don’t win today we may as well shut up shop and go home.”

On the way out after a 54-10 win over Rochdale Hornets, the Raiders’ first since the opening day of the season all that had changed to the widely-held opinion that “Rochdale were rubbish, really.”

So much for enjoying the fruits of success.

That the attendance topped 1,100 suggests there are still enough people around the town willing to support the team and the old grumps are in a minority.

But when a nine-try romp including a hat-trick from Papua New Guinea import Stargroth Amean fails to bring a smile on some faces there is clearly some strength in the view that rugby league fans are never happier than when they have something to complain about.