There's not a lot of love going around for the technicolour yawn that was the launch of the Big Bash League. The primary complaint is of too much spin - which is ironic for Australian cricket these days.

Watching the garish pink stretch-Hummer ceremony unfold, it was hard not to wince at the try-hardness of it all. For most of the ordeal my brain kept scanning the imaginary long-wave dial of my memory, stopping frequently on the Edwardian stylings of Henry Blofeld: "My dear old thing..." I'm sure the BBC's much-loved antiques were desperate to attend the launch but were turned away by the door-bitches for contravening the no-tie policy.

Equally as cringe-worthy, for me, has been the backlash from large sections of the cricket-writing fraternity. I'm 31, on the cusp of Gen Y and the razzmatazz of the BBL launch made me feel like a dinosaur. It must have been a horrific Naked Lunch experience for industry stalwarts nearer twice my age.

The point, as I see it, is this: what I, or my older and more esteemed colleagues in the cricket media, may have thought of the launch is pretty much irrelevant. The launch wasn't for us; it was for our children and grandchildren. As part of Cricket Australia's stable of offerings, cricket journalists will be mindful to cover the event but the league's intended audience will not form its opinions from scrutinising a daily broadsheet or wading into articulate cricket websites. Most of us seem to be missing that point.

The Melbourne Renegades garrisoned a skate park for a meet-and-greet photoshoot not because they wanted the story to run in the Melbourne dailies but because they wanted young people to attend, join in, and generate their own content. Capturing the imaginations and attentions of young people is not about crafting persuasive copy, it's about engaging with them on their terms.

The superbly designed www.bigbash.com.au is a good example. In place of a points table it currently has a Like Ladder, indicating which of the start-up franchises has the most Facebook followers.

This is a brave new world and if it is unfamiliar and uncomfortable to some of us, that's fine, it isn't meant for us anyway. (That aside, it is in the league's interest to at least try and tailor its communication towards the fourth estate to at least have a chance of being taken seriously on the sports pages.)

I spoke to Clint Cooper, CEO of Melbourne Stars, and he discussed engagement strategies involving Twitter, social media competitions and user-generated content. He promised greater involvement with fans, both at the ground and in lounge rooms, during play.

"We're going to be doing things that people want," he said. "Pushing the message out will be a lot more viral than perhaps people have been used to. There'll be a lot more below-the-line advertising than what we have used previously and we'll be working with partners to make sure we open up to new audiences that might not actually have ever been to a game before."

Cooper is driven by the experience in January 2010 when a record 43,000, mostly young people, watched Victoria defeat Tasmania in a Brad Hodge masterclass at the MCG. The Stars' CEO spent much of that game in the outer, finding out why people were there and how to replicate that experience in the future. He is confident the quality of the cricket will stand alone once people are through the turnstiles, the challenge is getting them in for that first visit.

Secondly, we curmudgeons should be rejoicing that the game's unlovely third format is on a path towards independence. If T20 enlarged into a separate sporting entity (I almost chose the term 'product') would it not benefit ‘real' cricket?

The existing ‘one-game to rule them all' structure confuses and dilutes. A strong T20, allowed to flourish in its own right, independent of the established cricketing order, is a fitting solution. The cricketing media should be celebrating the BBL launch and its 'wronglish' as a triumph. The clearer the delineation between the 20-over format and the rest, the better.

T20 is a format designed specifically to appeal to young people and attract matchgoers who would normally be put off by the start times and duration of conventional cricket fixtures. It was first developed in England at the turn of the millennium, the responsibility of the English Cricket Board's marketing manager, Stuart Robertson. As he explained to leading cricket writer, Paul Newman, some years later, "All it was then was a way to get new audiences interested in county cricket.

"I commissioned massive consumer research into what we should do...We spent £200,000, which was considered to be a lot of money for something like this. We tried to identify who was coming to cricket matches but, more importantly, who wasn't and why. There was a significant decline in attendances across the board and we had to do something about it. We came up with something that we hoped would appeal to people who were cash-rich but time-poor," Robertson said.

Unsurprisingly, these ‘new audiences' contained a high proportion of young people, for whom T20 offered a palatable entry to the world of live cricket. Games begin after schools decant and complete before curfews are broken. Prices for juniors were set admirably low to allow parents not to worry about taking their children (and their children's friends) or for teenagers to use their own allowances and incomes to go on their own.

The format quickly morphed like a cartoon mutant into something far more powerful than its creators could possibly have imagined. There was the Allen Stanford experience, the leviathan that is the IPL, the CLT20 and now the market research case study that is the BBL.

In the 10 short years that T20 has been the third of three formats cricket purists have maligned it throughout. It is the phantom limb that itches but can never be scratched. We just don't get it.

As the recent fiasco regarding the Australian touring party to Sri Lanka attests, T20 is now infiltrating the award of central CA contracts. Players are speaking out about the mismatch between ambition and income. For the first time in cricket's history, it is unclear to players what the game's pinnacle is any more.

I for one cannot wait for the BBL to begin. Not for the cricket. I have no more interest in that than I would for any other youth-orientated made-for-TV special event. I am fascinated however by its success. Will the MCG really be a cacophonous riot of pre-pubescent squeals? I hope so. And I hope the press box windows are firmly shut so the collective bah humbugging doesn't spoil the party.