• There are negative omens everywhere for Australian cricket. Television ratings are down 24% over 10 years; grounds are near empty for all but T20s and Ashes Test matches; the only real competitors, Rugby League and Aussie Rules Football, are booming, with Australian Football League (AFL) taking up nearly a third of all newspaper coverage; and Australia have just endured the most comprehensive Ashes drubbing by the old enemy.

It is enough to test any stalwart’s faith. Cricket, once indisputably the national game, has slipped behind AFL, horse racing, rugby league and motor sport, and sits just ahead of rugby union and soccer, according to the government’s attendance statistics.

Anecdotal evidence is, predictably, mixed. Some cultural critics suggest young Australians have been driven into the arms of other sports, such as basketball, or indoors, prisoners now of their computers.

Others see plenty of evidence in parks and streets of kids bashing tennis balls over fences, “six and out”, and throwing themselves about on grounds across the country in the ever-serious club competitions.

Alex Brown, the sports editor of the Herald, says the dips and rises are cyclical but, although the recent Ashes series commanded vast amounts of words and TV coverage, cricket is waging a tough battle.

“The golden era is well and truly over,” Brown says, “and we’ve known that for a while now. Also it’s a matter of saturation. There’s just been too much of it and, the past couple of seasons, there has not been the same buzz [as when Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist and the Waughs were playing].

How far the game has come from the days when Donald Bradman’s appearance at the crease would fill a ground to the rafters — just as his dismissal would often empty it. Cricket truly was the national sport then, giving way only in winter to the rugby codes and little else.

The fall from deity to mortals has been quick, painful and, so far, unstoppable. There is a huge disconnect in aspirations and strategy, and it is the concomitant discontent and widespread confusion that is eating away at cricket’s soul in a country where it was once the No1 game

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/australia/ashes