You'll be hard pushed to find anyone who will come away from the summer of cricket with much positivity.
Sure, Australia were excellent.
Steve Smith, Marnus Labuschagne, David Warner, Usman Khawaja, Travis Head, Cam Green and Alex Carey plundered runs to all corners of grounds across Australia.
Meanwhile, Pat Cummins, Mitch Starc Josh Hazlewood, Scott Boland and Green tenderised opposition batters with guile, pace and venom, while Nathan Lyon kept on doing Nathan Lyon things with the ball in hand.
Yet the whole while, there was a real sense of Australia just beating up on below-par opposition who were ill-equipped to handle such treatment so far from home.
Here's the catch too — it won't be getting any better soon.
Australia has played 34 Tests at home since South Africa inflicted defeat by an innings and 80 runs in the second Test of their 2016 tour in Hobart.
In that time, India have won four Tests, there have been five draws, and Australia has won the remaining 25. Twenty-four of them by more than six wickets or 120 runs.
Very few matches have been competitive, which says much about the strength of this Australian Test team, but arguably more about the lack of strength of the tourists.
Next summer, Australia welcomes Pakistan for three Tests and the West Indies again for two.
Pity the Cricket Australia marketing team for that one — they're going to have to think of some very imaginative campaigns to convince people these will be worth watching.
The following summer, India come to these shores for five Tests and, the year after, England return for the Ashes.
Those series are not the problem, though.
There will then be a one-off Test against Afghanistan in July 2026, followed by a split summer later that year, when New Zealand and Bangladesh come for three and two Tests respectively, split by a January visit to India.
All up, Australia has 44 Tests locked in up until March 2027 as per the ICC Future Tours Programme.
Only England (45) plays more Tests in that time, with India playing 42 times.
In that same time frame, there is a whole lot less Test cricket for teams like South Africa, who arguably need all the match practice they can get.
The Proteas will play the same number of series as Australia will in that time, 14, but will only play 30 Tests.
In fact, the next time South Africa will play a three-Test series is against Australia at home in September 2026 — all their other series are just two-matches.
Of the 30 Tests that South Africa plays, 10 of them will be against one of the big three — India, England or Australia — and only one of those series will be away from home, travelling to India for two Tests in November 2025.
Australia will play 14 Tests against India alone in that same time frame.
"The disappointment that we aren't playing more Tests this year sits with a lot of players," Dean Elgar said before the third Test started in Sydney.
"We can't make those decisions, it would be nice if we could have a massive influence in that but I guess the administrators feel we need to establish something in order to have revenue going forward.
"Maybe in a couple of years time we can incorporate more Tests going forward."
Including the recently concluded Sydney Test, South Africa plays just four Tests in 2023. Australia plays that many in India from February.
It's not just South Africa who are struggling for games either.
World Test champions New Zealand will only play 36 tests, exactly half against one of the big three.
At the other end of the spectrum, Test new-boys Ireland will play just 14 — including just once against one of the big three (away to England in May this year) and another one-off Test against New Zealand (at home in May 2026).
During the 2021/22 Ashes, Ireland captain Andrew Balbirnie took to Twitter to bemoan the lack of Test cricket Ireland had played since becoming a full member.
"Test cricket looks fun. Anyone want a game ?? Seriously," he wrote.
Ireland have not played a Test since a 2019 meeting with England at Lord's.
"As a player, there's no doubt that Test cricket is the absolute pinnacle of our sport," Balbirnie told the Belfast Telegraph last year after it was confirmed Ireland would play a second Lord's Test in June, ahead of the Ashes.
"We are excited to be returning to play the red-ball game next year. It's one of four Test matches we are scheduled to play in 2023, which is so important for such a relatively young squad.
"There is no better place to really learn, develop and test your game as in multi-day cricket."
A lack of Test cricket for the new full member associations — Ireland and Afghanistan were afforded full member status of the ICC in 2017 — is not uncommon, especially against the top teams.
India and Australia will only play one Test each against Afghanistan and ignore Ireland entirely — you'd argue to their great detriment.
"The Test we played [at Lord's] in 2019 was a memorable occasion … we saw a full house for three days, with the vocal and celebratory atmosphere created by the Irish fans making the match truly memorable," Balbirnie said.
"We learned afterwards … the TV audience was among the highest [the] ECB had for any Test opposition that decade outside of India and the Ashes."
The simple fact is that Test matches operate at a loss and, outside of the big three, there is little benefit to playing long series.
The fact that the only teams regularly playing series more than two Tests in length are the big three is a simple fact of economics.
No team, apart from when they play India, England or Australia, plays more than two Tests against the same opposition in a bilateral series.
The two-Test series are the minimum mandated by the ICC to keep the Test World Championship viable, ensuring Test cricket limps on.
But when the teams outside of the big three are being starved of meaningful matches outside of this box ticking, the long term viability of the format will doubtless be raised more and more.
