Speaking on the Sky Sports Cricket Podcast, the three pointed out various factors for why the competition now is weaker than it used to be, though Moody was wary of looking at the past through rose-tinted spectacles.

“My observation – and it’s always challenging when you get asked this question, because people think, ah you know, you never think it’s as good as it was when you played – but I genuinely believe that the standard of it is not as strong as it used to be,” he said. “I say that because I remember in the Eighties and the Nineties the domestic competition in Australia was looked upon and admired globally as the leading domestic cricket tournament being played, and I don’t hear those conversations as often as I heard them back then.”

Moody felt one reason was that not enough Australia Test cricketers are playing in the first-class competition as they used to. “A lot of international players were playing Sheffield Shield cricket 25 years ago, where you don’t have it as often [now]. I know Justin Langer has tried to change that, he’s trying to get players to be available for more first-class cricket which I think is really important,” he said.

It was a factor echoed by Warne. “It’s pretty simple. T20 has encroached on the international player’s time. Whether that be Big Bash, IPL, whatever it may be. The international players are not playing state cricket, and if they do it might be a token game that they don’t want to play, and then it flows down, the state player doesn’t play grade cricket.”

More fundamental for all three was the weakening of the standards underneath the Sheffield Shield, with both grade cricket and second XI coming in for criticism. “I don’t think it’s as strong as what has been previously, because I’m not sure what’s happening underneath first-class cricket here in Australia is as clear and as direct a method of players to come through the system,” said Moody.

“Club cricket, the dramatic change has been the age. The average age of a club cricketer in this day and age to what it was, say, 20 years ago is quite a bit different, it’s a very young dressing room in an A-grade club side now, so therefore the learnings are nowhere near as rich as what they were previously because you don’t have the old heads in that dressing room to share stories and experiences.

In the 2019/20 season, Cricket Australia scrapped the age restrictions in second XI cricket, and with Australia now the No.1 ranked Test side in the world again, it remains to be seen whether we are now entering a new period of Aussie dominance.