Catching interest: Jake Weatherald took an absolute screamer – assisted by a teammate – to dismiss Dwayne Bravo in the BBL. But who won the match? Credit:AAP By now, summer was just getting started, but the cricket was drawing to a close. The Big Bash League has provided its usual crop of vivid moments amid an unfocused overall narrative. In one hour, I saw four of the best catches I have ever seen. The next day, I could remember the catches all right, but not who was playing or who won. That's Twenty20. Meanwhile, a one-day international series meandered into a permanent twilight. I'm sure I was not the only viewer who, anticipating an Australia-England game for the first time in nearly a week, switched on the box excitedly and then, after an over, thought, 'Meh, I'll come back to it tonight, see if it's much of a game'. And it rarely was. What has happened to January? Crowds and audiences were down. International cricket's prime time has become its down time, for the top players as much as for the fans. In four weeks from January 8, Steve Smith, David Warner and the cream of a cricketing generation were on the field for just five days. The less they played, the more weary they appeared. If they were Tomic, they'd have expired from lack of interest. In the holiday month when the national sporting conversation could have at least mentioned international cricket, it was instead drawn to a player auction for the Indian Premier League, a tournament that Australians will not see. Cricket had become a branch of commerce, or worse still, accountancy: nobody producing anything, everybody worrying about how to pay the bills. The IPL auction was bigger news and better sport, not to mention bearing a greater rate of interest, than the last dribbles of the local one-day series. As a population, Australians were reduced to the status of those sad individuals who line the red carpet at big events to watch the stars arrive, but are not allowed into the theatre. And that was that. Some Twenty20 matches for the fag end, before the remainder of the Sheffield Shield is eclipsed by the death star of football. What just happened – or didn't happen?

Uninteresting: The ODI series between Australia and England went past in a flash. Credit:AAP The first thing was that the dazzling exploits of the early summer – Steve Smith's batting, the outstanding Australian bowling unit, the ebb and flow of the first three Ashes Tests – were only visible to those lucky enough not to be at work or school. It was cricket for the cognoscente, not the masses, which only hastens the feedback loop of Test cricket disappearing up its own nuances. The next thing to notice was the illogic. January was meant to be kept clear for the bumper crowds and mass appeal of hit-and-giggle coloured-clothing white-ball cricket. Instead, the big crowds had turned out for the traditional five-day version of the game, but when the one-day stuff was on, Australia turned off. Jubilation: By the time Steve Smith and Australia had their hands on the Ashes, the excitement in the series was long gone. Credit:AAP So at a moment when Cricket Australia should have a bristling, happy product to take to the TV rights market, it has a form of entertainment that missed its golden chance and a national team that went overnight from significant triumph to meaningless crisis. The Ashes series already seems a long time ago. The unfortunate public should be digesting and discussing their team's epic Ashes achievement, but instead they are, in a position analogous to spectators, stewing over Smith's yellow-shirt slump and fretting over a World Cup 18 months away. All because their summer has been turned upside-down and inside-out by confused, compromised, tin-eared scheduling.

Cricket Australia is not unaware of the problem, and is groping towards a solution by planning four Test matches after Christmas next year. This is a move in the right direction and must lead to a reshaped summer by the time England tour again for an Ashes series in 2021-22. The game and its television broadcaster need to work together in the interest of the cricket public. If we can imagine an ideal cricketing summer, it will look like this. A one-day international series as a pipe-opener in November, the evening scheduling giving workers and students a chance to watch. Then time for England to play three first-class matches before a Brisbane Test match in mid-December, followed by a two-week break before back-to-back Tests over Christmas and New Year in Melbourne and Sydney. By then, having had much more time to acclimatise, the touring team should at least still be in a competitive position for the Ashes. Another first-class match can take place before a January Test match in Perth, followed by the summer-ending Test match over what was formerly known as the Australia Day weekend in Adelaide, a pink-ball fixture in much more congenial temperatures than the chilly spring evenings of those earlier Adelaide day-nighters. The Big Bash League can coexist with international cricket, coming to its own climactic finals series a week after the end of the Test season. Sounds good. Not only commonsense, but it would provide the conditions where the majority of the Australian population can watch as much as they like of the most popular form of international cricket, and get the chance to gather memories that won't quickly fade, and build the common mythology that such a game needs to prosper. Cricket. Summer. Is that not too simple? As it seeks a broadcast partner, cricket cannot afford to offer the same-old same-old. The formula needs refreshing, on both sides of the partnership. Four years until the next Ashes. Is that enough time to get it right? Whatever happens, if it doesn't look a lot different from the summer just passed, it is going to become a game that belongs to summers past.