The inaugural Champions League Twenty20 has veered from reality to fantasy and back as it kicks off in December.

Finally though it will get under way on December 3 when Middlesex Crusaders take on the Victoria Bushrangers at Mumbai's Brabourne Stadium.

There, as if to encapsulate the fact that nothing is quite what it seems in the increasingly madcap world of modern cricket, Middlesex will be playing against, rather than with, one of the men who helped them qualify.

Pace bowler Dirk Nannes, a former World Cup skier, saxophone player and Japanese speaker, took the new ball in Middlesex's three-run win over Kent in July's Twenty20 Cup final at the Rose Bowl.

Yet next month, he will probably be doing likewise for his native Australian state side - or the Twenty20 version of it at least.

Another interesting character is set to be shouldering the seam-bowling duties for the Bushrangers, England and Nottinghamshire's Grimsby-born, Dandenong-raised Darren Pattinson.

For a player who found himself the unwitting eye of a storm on his Test debut at Headingley last summer, the Champions League Twenty20 may just present a welcome opportunity to remain out of the spotlight.

The high profile of team-mates and opponents should see to that, in a competition sure to play heavily on hype and publicity and with Rajasthan Royals coach Shane Warne unlikely to shy away from his responsibilities on that score.

Just imagine the pre-match bluster if Warne's IPL winners end up taking on his home state Victoria, captained by his fellow Aussie Test leg-spinner Cameron White, in the Chennai final on December 10.

The occidental tourists of Antigua - they failed there to cope with Stanford Twenty20 kings Trinidad and Tobago last month - have a second chance to scoop a jackpot.

Should they do so, it will be an astounding, defining even, epilogue to Shaun Udal's career, in which the off-spinner seemed sure for a decade or more not to add to a smattering of one-day international caps from his youth.

Instead, he made his Test debut approaching the age of 37 and having announced his retirement last year after a long association with his native Hampshire, at almost 40 he finds himself in with a shot at a pension beyond his wildest dreams.

Whoever pockets the champions' fortune, though, will surely be pinching themselves, not only at taking the opportunity of a lifetime but that despite all the intrigue, the Champions League Twenty20 did actually happen after all.