A number of the most accomplished players of the recent past — Shane Warne, Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer — now appear in the media, as commentators (and, in Warne's case, also for his many alleged extramarital dalliances, most recently with the actress Liz Hurley). They are familiar enough with their successors to moderate their criticism. Ricky Ponting, the present captain and a fine batsman, was their captain in the good days, and when opponents appeared to be getting on top, Ponting would throw the ball to Warne or Glenn McGrath, a consummate pace bowler, assuming that they would be capable of solving his problem. Ponting is a great cricketer in his own right, but he cannot disguise the glaring truth that his team is going to pieces. As he admitted in Adelaide, they were "out-batted, out-bowled and out-fielded". Losing captains use up their resources very quickly. Ponting is evidently a very tired man, and yet there is no obvious successor. His deputy Michael Clarke is the epitome of the cricketer as celebrity rather than team player. (He once had a fight in the dressing room with Simon Katich, a confirmed traditionalist.) It is time for panic stations. 

The endless supply of ambitious, well-coached, ruthless young players is drying up. Coaches from an earlier generation bemoan the tendency of adolescents to spend too much time playing computer games. Consequently, their bodies cannot cope with a rigorous coaching regime. They get stress fractures and do not train on. The fastest bowler in the nation, Shaun Tait, commits himself only to one-day cricket. He and others who do play five-day Tests, are in thrall to the sporting melodrama and the rich pickings in the Indian Premier League's Twenty20 tournament.

Indeed, Australian cricket is aping the Indian example by marketing the game fiercely to engage a vast TV audience. This has been successful in India, so far, but maximising income in the short term does not generate long-term stability. And it exhausts the means of production — the cricketers themselves. Another phenomenon of cricket in the subcontinent further alienates spectators in Australia. They believe Pakistani cricket is bent, and see little point in watching it.

The emphasis on money has an unintended consequence. One of the most attractive qualities of Australian men was mateship — the idea that loyalty was a social good, and tight unity lent strength to groups like sports teams. But standards are changing utterly. Loyalty is to the family not the team, and when money and celebrity become the arbiters of a sportsman's ability, the centre fails to hold. Things fall apart. But the Aussies already know that.