Mitchell Johnson: Australian summer of cricket feels shorter than ever as game fragments itself

There was a moment recently, sitting with a coffee, a few mates, the usual morning conversation, when someone asked a simple question: “Did this summer feel different?” It caught me off guard. Because it did. An Ashes summer should feel heavy. It should feel like a slow burn from November through to late January, into February. In 2013/2014, the summer of cricket went for roughly 10 weeks, which included ODIs and T20s to finish the summer. It should dominate conversations at barbecues, fill the back pages every morning and stretch across five hard-fought Test matches that leave everyone exhausted, players and fans alike. Instead, this year we had a shortened Ashes series. Not one, but two Tests finished inside two days. Eleven days of actual cricket out of a possible 25 days of Ashes battles. 2013/14 went for 19 days, a huge difference. The Ashes wrapped up early in January, and just like that, the oxygen shifted. The conversation turned quickly. The focus moved. It didn’t linger. That’s what felt different. There was a time when the Australian summer revolved around Test cricket. Boxing Day meant Melbourne. The New Year meant Sydney. Australia Day meant Adelaide Oval, packed, loud, sunburnt and electric. Even the one-dayers carried weight. Tri-series finals. Day-night cricket under lights. It was layered. It was built over months. Now it feels compressed. Get the Test series done. Roll into the Big Bash. Park the one-day format unless there’s a 50-over World Cup around the corner. That gradual shift hasn’t happened overnight. It’s been creeping for years. The Big Bash has carved its place. It’s fast, accessible, and family-friendly. It suits shorter attention spans and prime-time television. There’s no argument that it has commercial appeal. But somewhere along the way, the balance feels like it tilted too far. Less of the long-form grind. More of the hit-and-giggle. That’s not nostalgia talking, it’s observation. Test cricket used to be played throughout the entire summer. It created storylines. Series arcs. Player duels that simmered for weeks. When two Tests are wrapped up inside 48 hours, that narrative depth never forms. The public barely settles in before it’s over. And when it’s over early January, what fills the vacuum? In Western Australia, and many parts of the country, the answer is obvious. AFL. Even when footy season isn’t on, it dominates conversation. Draft speculation. Trade talk. Pre-season training. It holds attention 12 months a year. It never truly disappears. Has cricket lost that pull? On paper, you’d argue no. Social media numbers are strong. Digital engagement is high. Sponsorship is healthy. Broadcast deals remain significant. An Ashes series, especially against England, should be peak interest alongside an India tour. But social media impressions don’t always equal emotional investment. I’m not a ratings analyst, but I’d be genuinely interested to see how viewership stacks up compared to 10 or 20 years ago. And what about access? A T20 World Cup is currently being played in India and Sri Lanka. How many casual fans know that? It’s not on free-to-air television. That’s not unusual anymore, most sports have moved behind subscription platforms, but the slow shift to paid coverage has consequences. When overseas tours first went off free-to-air, there were warnings, you risk losing the fringe viewer. The part-time follower who won’t pay a subscription but would happily leave the TV on in the background on a summer afternoon. That erosion doesn’t show up overnight. It’s subtle. It’s gradual. It changes habits. There’s also the grassroots question. Toward the end of my playing days, I remember conversations around schools phasing cricket out of sports programs. Not everywhere, but enough to notice. Whether that has had a measurable impact is debatable. But pathways matter. Cultural presence matters. If kids aren’t exposed to cricket consistently, the emotional connection weakens. And summer in Australia has always been about emotion. Sun. Backyard cricket. Radios humming in sheds. Scorecards scribbled on the back of beer coasters. Long days where the game just sat in the background of life. Did this summer feel this way? Maybe it was the brevity of the Ashes. Maybe it was two Tests finishing before they properly began. Maybe it’s the fragmentation of formats, Test, ODI, T20, each competing for space. Maybe it’s simply modern sport evolving faster than tradition can keep up. Or maybe I’m overthinking it. But when your morning coffee conversations shift to footy almost immediately after an Ashes series ends, that says something. T20 cricket was created to attract new audiences, to entertain, to keep pace with changing consumption habits. Globally, it’s been enormously successful. Franchise leagues are booming. The product is sharp and fast. The question is whether that growth has strengthened the Australian summer, or thinned it out. Because a packed Big Bash schedule doesn’t replace the theatre of five-Test warfare. It doesn’t replace a drawn-out series where tension builds across weeks. It doesn’t replace the feeling that cricket owns the season. Cricket isn’t dying in Australia. That would be dramatic and inaccurate. But has it softened? Has it drifted from the centre of summer life? This year, it felt like it had. And maybe that’s the real conversation worth having, not about nostalgia, not about formats versus formats, but about whether the game still commands the same space in our national summer rhythm. In Australia, summer and cricket were never meant to be separate.