The opening Twenty20 World Championship match against South Africa confirmed a lot about West Indies cricket and even more about this fledgling and exciting form of the game. Watching the Windies bowlers hammered around the park by Herschelle Gibbs and Justin Kemp reminded me of my childhood trips to the dentist when after the pain of the drill came a trip to the sweet shop round the corner with my mum.

Didn't the Proteas just know it - after Chris Gayle allegedly took the game beyond their reach with a magnificent 117 in 57 balls that the sweet shop of Caribbean candy-drop bowlers would hand them the game on a plate.

That the Windies could not defend 205 was bad; that they could not defend it inside 18 overs was a disgrace with dropped catches, wides and sloppy fielding conspiring to make the result inevitable. And why Gayle himself was not called on to bowl his teasers only Ramnaresh Sarwan will know.

'The Windies literally threw the game away, not just by dropped catches, but by allowing ones to become twos and giving away absurd boundaries by poor field placements'

Twenty20 has morphed from wham-bam-thank-you-man to a fascinating form of the game with its own dynamic. When one-day cricket started in the early sixties with the Gillette Cup 60 overs, two to three runs an over was considered fast, and when, almost two years ago, South Africa successfully chased over 400 in 50 overs to beat the Aussies on the same ground, it seemed there was nothing left to achieve in the shortened form of the game.

But Twenty20 has given us an insight into the unknown, a place where every ball bowled, every fieldsman placed and every minutiae conspires towards the outcome. And it's this absolute attention to detail which makes the game totally irresistible. In the psychology of a ten-an-over run chase, a dot ball is a piece of forensic detail which can damn the batting side to a five-year stretch. The only way to get out of that jail is up and over the wall for six, with some of the world's best stroke players (Gibbs and Gayle) inventing miraculous shots and relying on a batsman's greatest natural skill - hand-eye co-oordination.

The bowlers' task is much more difficult as the batting text books are replaced by these outrageous methods of getting willow on the leather. Defending ten an over may sound easy  - the Windies thought it was a cakewalk - but two fours, plus two wides or two singles and the batting side are there.  That was Sarwan's mistake last night. He assumed that the old theory of medium pace up and down the line would do the trick. In the end, the only bowler who made any impression was speed merchant Fidel Edwards, who should have been accompanied by Gayle's mixture of spin and guile.