KEY POINTS:
While the Australian cricket team is again rightly celebrating another Ashes victory bringing the series score against England to an emphatic 4-0, the comprehensive nature of the wins has one asking this question - is it healthy for test match cricket that one nation should be so dominant?
While Australia takes on all-comers and trounces them, at the other end of the scale countries such as Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are routinely thrashed by opponents, year in, year out.
Watching Australian captain Ricky Ponting get century after century against mediocre bowling might warm the hearts of Australian cricket-lovers, but it's not a good sign for world cricket.
It's reminiscent of the dominance of the West Indies between 1980 and 1994-95, when they did not lose a test series and sapped the life out of cricket for many spectators.
Like the West Indies in that golden era, Australia is a side that seems, with the aberration of the loss to England in the 2005 series, to bounce back from the toughest situations.
This makes it almost impossible for other sides to win more than one test match, if any, against Australia.
Even with gun bowlers Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne gone at the end of this summer, Australia's batting line-up and up-and-coming bowlers like Stuart Clark are likely to see it dominate the world scene for some years yet.
Australia's dominance is evidenced by these staggering statistics. Since the beginning of 1996 Australia has played 128 test matches, won 88 of them and lost only 22. In 2006 it played 10 tests and won all of them. In 2000 it played eight tests and also won every one, and in 2002 it won 10 of 11 tests.
At the other end of the scale we have Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. They are the permanent cellar-dwellers of world cricket. Since they were admitted to test cricket ranks, these countries combined have played 127 tests and won only nine - Bangladesh has one win from 44 tests and Zimbabwe eight from 83.
And New Zealand and the West Indies stand little or no chance of ever beating Australia.
So how do we ensure test match cricket is more balanced? How do we devise a system that makes it much more difficult for one country to be unofficial world champion for long stretches, as is the case today?
Apparently the world cricket authorities have a desire to make their game parallel to soccer in terms of global influence.
So how about taking a leaf out of soccer's book and adopting a tier system in which teams are relegated and promoted. One of the reasons why soccer is so popular across the globe is because it operates on this basis.
Small countries like Ecuador and Croatia have an opportunity to win World Cup qualifiers and then be "promoted" into the World Cup finals every four years.
One way to do this would be to create divisions of countries. Australia, England, India, South Africa and Pakistan and perhaps Sri Lanka would be a natural premier division.
New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and the West Indies would make up the next division.
The objective of growing test cricket in other countries would be enhanced if there was also a third division of test-playing countries such as Kenya, Canada, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Scotland - all countries which do quite well in the one-day sphere.
A relegation and promotion system, alongside a concerted effort by wealthy cricketing nations like Australia, India and England to assist lower division countries might ensure that test match cricket is not simply dominated by one of two countries for so long.
It will be no bad thing if Australia struggles one day against Bangladesh or Zimbabwe. That will simply show how healthy world cricket has become.
There is no reason why a series between Australia and India shouldn't attract the attention of the public and the media in the same way a series against England does.
As Shane Warne rightly observed last year, the test cricket system is allowing too many players to get cheap wickets and cheap runs. He is a fan of the promotion and relegation system.
"In [English] county cricket there are a lot more competitive games, a lot riding on each game, promotion and relegation is very, very important," Warne says.
Sure, watching Australia win is satisfying. But seeing Zimbabwe and Bangladesh struggling is not.
Both phenomena are symptoms of the failure of the current test cricket competition structure. It's time to level the playing field.
* Greg Barns is a columnist with the Hobart Mercury.
