Tuesday, June 18, 2002 Cricket in Australia is about sunshine and sunscreen. Blue skies and bare brown skin. Falling asleep at the beach. Firing up the barbie. Going to moonlight cinemas. Reading paperback fiction. Tim Lane on the radio. Richie Benaud on the telly. The rest of us on holiday. These things we know to be true.

These things were missing from the farce that passed for international cricket in Melbourne last week. Tim Lane was busy calling the footy. Richie was otherwise occupied with Channel 4 in England. Precious few of us were on holiday. Even fewer of us were at the cricket. A crowd of 11,681 to watch Australia play Pakistan in Melbourne, where sport is not only king but the Pope and Jesus too, is no crowd at all. Lawn-bowls showdowns between Dandenong and Coburg draw bigger turnouts than that. So do inter-suburban arm-wrestling tournaments and pub trivia nights at The Hairy Canary. For cricket, it was an embarrassment.

Still, it was a worthwhile embarrassment. We had suspected all along that midwinter was the name of an obscure 19th-century allrounder who played for both Australia and England - and not a time of year when cricket should be played. But we were never going to know until we gave it a go. The outcome of the inaugural Super Challenge two years ago, when Australia played South Africa under the Colonial Stadium roof, was inconclusive. Back then, the three matches were closely fought and attended by almost 95,000 people. But how many went along out of curiosity? How many would go back if the experiment was ever repeated?

Now we know. Last Wednesday, on the morning before the opening match against Pakistan, there was the usual flicker of rapt anticipation, as there is on the eve of any series. But it had fizzled out by the time Simon O'Donnell threw to the first ad-break. For about two minutes the mind marvelled at the fact that cricket was being played inside while the guncrack of thunder could be heard outside. For the other six hours the mind wondered why you were making it sit through yet another numbingly predictable one-day match - and in the middle of June, of all times.

The smartest thing for the ACB to do now would be to stick with its summertime monopoly and write off the midwinter experiment as research - an expensive survey, if you like, into the foibles and fancies of the cricket-watching public. But it is too late for that. Already the money-mad marketing maniacs have scheduled two matches against Bangladesh in Darwin and Cairns next winter. This time they will be five-day clashes, not one-day thrashes. The potential for embarrassment will be fivefold.

Again, it will be wonderful if it works. Tests against Bangladesh should be encouraged. So should international games beyond the big cities, even if the motives of the ACB - unfailingly stingy in its support of regional areas - have more to do with expenses than expansion. And the novelty of it all should ensure healthy crowds, despite the fact that the time-honoured rituals of Top End cricket enthusiasts - play in the dry season, watch in the wet - will be turned upside-down just like everyone else's.

But in the coastal cities of the south, where most Australians live, it will be cold. All eyes will have switched to the football and rugby, to the golf and tennis majors. How much space will newspapers devote to a series against the team that might more accurately be called Crashladesh? How will Channel 9 hype this most unhypeable of contests? How many viewers will tune in to the slaughter waiting to happen?

Then there is the question of overkill. If Australia, as seems increasingly likely, host the forthcoming three-Test series against Pakistan, then the match at Cairns will be Australia's tenth home Test in ten months. Too much sport is barely enough, so they say, but this surely is not what Roy Slaven and HG Nelson had in mind.

Maybe, just maybe, it will all be OK on the day. Maybe the magic of the five-day game will cast its spell yet again, and next winter's Tests will excite where last week's one-dayers exasperated. More likely, we will be lumbered with an unwanted, unwatched and unedifying addition to an already cluttered calendar.

Fans, the ACB should remember, are no different from players. We get tired too. A Test match nags away at our subconscious for five days on end, taxing our patience, our emotions, our credulity. Fans, like players, need long periods of rest and recuperation. Energies must be replenished. Batteries must be recharged. Parts of our life that suffered during the cricket season - family, friends, hobbies, work - must be restored to some kind of order.

In contemplating the future of midwinter cricket in the 21st century, it is worth reflecting on what happened to that other cricketing midwinter, William, towards the end of the 19th century. "He died tragically," recorded Jack Pollard, "in Melbourne's Kew asylum for the insane, aged only 39."

The end should come even quicker for modern-day midwinter cricket. It is an insanity that has already overstayed its welcome.

Chris Ryan is a former managing editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly and a former Darwin correspondent of the Melbourne Age.

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