Fleming was in Dunedin yesterday as an ambassador for LJ Hooker Real Estate and told the Otago Daily Times one-day cricket would become a distant memory with twenty/20 and the Indian Premier League (IPL) threatening to overwhelm the format.
Fleming played for the Chennai Super Kings in the inaugural IPL and was surprised how quickly the tournament captured people's imagination.
"I can't explain to you how big it is," Fleming said.
"You might have got an idea by how many people went to the games but it is three or four pages in the newspaper each day.
"There are three or four 24/7 news channels and every second story was on IPL. It is just massive - it's a beast."
But Fleming believes it will work in partnership with test cricket, rather than compete with the traditional form of the game.
One-day cricket, though, is a dinosaur and looks set to become extinct.
"I firmly believe test cricket will get looked after but the one-day game is under threat."
Fleming said only so much international cricket could be squeezed into a summer and market forces would ultimately decide which form of the game would survive.
"You'll start to see maybe one game of 50-50 and five twenty/20 games, and why wouldn't you because the crowd is going to go and see it and don't want a five-match one-day series.
"Something will have to go and I firmly believe one-day cricket will start to go."
Fleming played 279 ODIs for the Black Caps and scored 8007 runs at an average of 32.47.
It was a fine career and one which provided many highlights.
So you might expect him to be saddened by his bleak forecast.
But in Fleming's book, test cricket should remain the priority and, if twenty/20 is better placed to bankroll the game than 50-50 cricket, he is quite relaxed about it.
"I guess I'd get a little worried if the next phase was 10-10 or 5-5.
But twenty/20 cricket fits in nicely and will fund test cricket for the next 10, 20 years."
What does concern him is the impact it will have on the way test cricket is played.
With the popularity of the IPL, new players who have been brought up with twenty-20 cricket would emerge from the Subcontinent.
A solid forward defence was not going to attract a lucrative contract to play for one of the eight franchises and so the game would influence an entire generation of cricketers, Fleming said.
"Players are going to learn a style of play that is attractive for twenty/20 cricket and then learn test cricket, rather than learn the basics like good defence and then try to expand.
"They [India] are going to get players who will grow up only on a diet of twenty/20 cricket and then will be asked to play a longer form of the game.
"Whether they've got the tools to do that will be their greatest challenge."
He had no regrets missing the Black Caps' recent test series against England.
"I love the cut and thrust of a competitive environment but it is everything else that goes along with it [I don't miss]."
