Cricket looks like it’s in crisis for the forseeable future (and it’s not just the almost gameless December). What is to be done, for starters, to make Test cricket a test once again?

With the obligation to play every other side in rotation, the Australians have only been given an opportunity to bore more people in more places with their relentless style of winning play. (Not that I’m against this style – it’s fantastic, but the other countries simply cannot compete.)

You only have to look at the farce with Sir Lanka in two of the dreariest test matches ever – and Sri Lanka is by no means the worst team in the world.

In the Brisbane and Hobart tests, the Sri Lankans took a total of only 11 Australian wickets, Australia declaring each of its three innings closed. Sri Lanka, by contrast, was bowled out four times – 40 wickets. Mitchell Johnson has played two tests and not even held a bat.

The ICC has looked at, and apparently discarded, a system of divisions. This in any case would solve little as Australia would be in an even smaller group that it would probably dominate just as easily. Then what?

It might be that the game’s administrators have to think outside the square leg, and look at a form of Melbourne Cup-style handicapping.

If the Aussies were to play Bangladesh at Cairns, they’d probably struggle to get a half-way respectable gate, but if Australia were handicapped at, say, 300 runs, a contest might – just might – ensue.

Matt Hayden and Phil Jacques would walk out on the first day needing to put on 300 just to make a start. Fighting that deficit might make for more entertaining cricket than just carting the Bangladeshis over northern Australia.

And what will the game’s thinkers come up with when 20/20 is found to be too taxing for the ever-decreasing attention span of viewers?

Like I said, the crisis is ongoing.