There was a time not too long ago when the Australian summer was clearly defined along sporting lines, and diaries could be marked up as such many months beforehand. October and November meant spring racing, in late November and December we started getting to know the visiting Test cricket team, the yachts came and went over Boxing Day (along with the start of the third Test) and then the tennis would warm up in January, all the while being leavened by some golf and cricket on the other TV channels. That was the way of the world in these parts; we Norms could set our clock by it.

A look at today’s newspapers would tell you that a quiet revolution has taken place in the past year or so, almost without us realizing. The natural order of things has been irredeemably thrown into disarray.

The sports sections this morning were dominated by the smiling face of boxer Floyd Mayweather, and the slightly more battered version of Ricky Hatton, the man Mayweather beat yesterday for the WBC welterweight title. Mayweather is an American, Hatton a Brit – there was not an Australian in sight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas – yet there the pugilist pair were, dominating newspaper space normally reserved for our cricketers who would traditionally be playing a second Test about now.

But there has been no Test cricket in Australia since the Sri Lankans packed their bags after the Bellerive Test on November 20. And more than five weeks will elapse before the Indians grace the MCG on Boxing Day. Sure, we’ll get our fill of Twenty20 cricket, which starts tomorrow against New Zealand (and that, as much as anything, epitomises the revolution in our sporting summer) but that is no consolation for the purists.

Cricket’s power base has, for some time now, been residing in the sub-continent. India is currently playing a home series against Pakistan, attracting TV audiences by the zillion and bookmakers’ turnover by the billion. It will arrive in Australia when it is good and ready. Cricket Australia, meanwhile, will have to twiddle its thumbs while it waits – and watches as other sports get the publicity and the newspaper headlines, even boxing.

Our colonial muscle, once so strong that the Australian Cricket Board could pretty much pick and choose who toured here and on precisely what dates, now packs a powderpuff punch. When it comes to cricket superpowers, we sit very much among the middle-ranking nations.

India, primarily, and Pakistan call the shots. Understanding that 70 per cent of cricket’s revenue is generated out of India, the ICC is reluctant to upset its cash cow. If India doesn’t want to come to Australia until mid-December, after it has played Pakistan at home, then it jolly well won’t. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Sniffing the wind a couple of years ago, the ICC moved its offices from the traditional home of Lord’s to Dubai, where it would be nearer the centres of power. (There were also major tax advantages to be had from such a relocation but that, of course, was a peripheral perk.)

During a recent address to the South Australian Press Club, Cricket Australia boss James Sutherland quantified the commercial power of Indian cricket. He revealed the staggering – and alarming – statistic that the expatriate Indian population in the United States was now the second most lucrative television rights market for cricket; it far exceeded the Australian figure.

“In terms of the television rights market in the world, No.1 is India, but the second biggest market is the United States, ahead of the UK and South Africa, so that’s a decent indication of the influence of the Indian subcontinent,” Sutherland said.

So that helps explain why we are enduring a five-week Test cricket drought in summer for the first time since World War II. And why a boxing bout on the other side of the world that was not even a heavyweight fight, that featured an American and a Briton, that finished in the middle of the afternoon, has dominated the sports pages today.