On the fifth day of the Gabba Test I counted the crowd by hand. It didn't take long.

In the seats at the Vulture Street end, 280 people watched Australia win big and New Zealand go down swinging. Another 120 sat in the shade on the eastern side of the ground.

The rest of the stadium was blocked off with barriers and security guards who just about outnumbered their wards. These fluorescent warriors must have been included for the official count to top 1,300, because the balance of the crowd was not carousing at the bar. The internal concourses matched the hollow echo of the unlovely concrete bowl they circumnavigate.

It was an atmosphere as lively as the lamented Pakistan matches in empty Arab Emirates stadiums. From Ryan Harris on the first day, driving half of his farewell lap in front of an empty grandstand, to this non-event on the last, the Gabba just felt sad.

Some people got defensive about that criticism, even from those of us who were not grandly claiming the death of Test cricket. I kept being told it was a record trans-Tasman crowd for the venue, as though that means anything after ten Tests against a historically weak side, and as though Brisbane's population has not more than doubled since the first in 1980.

I got a hundred explanations: the Test was too early, too short, needed a tour match, Monday was a work day, Sunday it rained a bit, Saturday the kids play sport, every day was too hot. All this for Queensland, where saying that it's hot with a chance of showers is like saying there will be air outside tomorrow.

In any case, as Will Swanton wrote in The Australian, it's less the death of the audience as the death of atmosphere. Put a few thousand in a cricket ground and it can still be brilliant. Double them in a multipurpose sports-arena-meets-Vogon-spaceship and you can barely tell they exist.

And for all the kneeling in the rain and howling to the heavens to ask why, a huge part of the answer should be obvious: an ill-considered confluence between Cricket Australia, venues, ticketing bodies and retailers to extract cash from any punter who walks in the gate.

When someone messaged me on Twitter saying that Gabba tickets were over a hundred bucks, I nearly fell off my chair. I get to be complacent these days, wandering into cricket grounds without a thought for entry. Turns out this is akin to getting a daily bath in fresh oysters.

The rain may have scared a few punters off in Brisbane, but the inordinate pricing gave them no incentive to attend. ( ABC News: Dean Bilton )

The message was correct. Opt for a seat anywhere vaguely behind the wicket, and the Gabba will sting you $102. Decent seats at the WACA are $112. Cop something with no shade and a worse view and you might drop to $81 or $61. Your cheapest option is to get in the Family zone out at square leg where you'll be unable to follow the play while being climbed on by other people's kids for a mere $35.

Oh, and make sure you add $8.85 for a "handling fee", because apparently handling tickets is an extra service for a ticket company. And another $5 to $15 if you want said tickets delivered, because that wouldn't be covered by handling.

So to take your family of four to sit in the 40-degree Perth heat for an entire day it will set you back at least $85. For proper seats in the stand, make that $381.61. For January's ODI at the more economical Gabba, reap the savings with $344.86. Go with a few friends, and you'll collectively drop half a grand.

Add the cost of sustenance - beers at around $9, soft drinks at $5, unidentifiable food items starting at $10 and soaring - and you could easily add another $100 for the family, or $100 a head for the punters spending a day being banned from making beer snakes. (Remember that fun is dangerous.)

Factor in transport, parking, maybe a piece of criminally overpriced team merchandise, and someone on a modest after-tax wage could end up paying one percent of their annual income for an afternoon at the cricket.

On the cricket. On a day at the cricket.

Who are the people pricing this stuff? Where do they live? More relevantly, what do they earn?

Because this is a function of the people selling tickets having much more money than the people being sold them. It's easy in a high-up corporate environment to say a hundred bucks is a fair price for a day. It isn't.

I want to be clear here. I love cricket, but it's not that good. We'll pay that money to see huge bands, because they hardly ever tour and it costs them a lot to get here. But Joe Burns is not a rock star. He's a cricketer, playing a sport that is part of our annual national life.

Brendon McCullum's fifth-day cameo was exciting, but in front of empty seats. ( Getty Images: Mark Kolbe )

It's also massively inconsistent. A day of Test cricket might involve a thrilling hundred or close finish. Or two sessions of go-slow defence or rain. You might get solid, pedestrian play, 4 for 180. That's part of cricket's charm, but for a day out it's a massive risk.

A hundred for a game I can watch at home on TV, where I can see more of the action and better understand what's happening while not getting mugged every time I go to the fridge? It's like getting motorists onto public transport - live sport has to make a compelling case for its use.

Yes, the main game is TV and radio, but bigger crowds makes a better product. It was so quiet in Brisbane that the broadcasters' stump microphones could pick up Peter Siddle tying his shoelace. As twelfth man. In Sydney.

So slash the prices like an unhinged whitegoods retailer. Rethink the approach. Open the game up. Aim for twice as many people paying a third of the price. If the venues squeal then work out the difference.

And for pity's sake throw open the gates any time we get to Day 5 - even if there's a good contest, get it the biggest possible crowd. Make that a reward for punters who pay the other days, or the chance to attend for people who can't afford to.

All we hear about is the bottom line, but the bottom line is that cricket needs people. It needs its audience, its involvement and its atmosphere. The money managers will always complain that they can't afford to let people in, but the game can't afford to carry on keeping people out.