Want further proof that not even Cricket Australia can muster much enthusiasm about the summer of cricket we're currently enduring?

Next summer's schedule has already been released and it represents further tweaking of the summer of cricket we had become accustomed to for quite some time.

Of most note is the early start. The first international match of the summer will feature Australia and Sri Lanka playing a Twenty20 match at the WACA on 31 October. That's two days before the Melbourne Cup.

The first part of November will feature one-day clashes against the Lankans and will delight Channel Nine, which has long wanted prime-time cricket in the last ratings period of the year. But with Test matches taking priority over short forms of the game in the opening part of the season, that hasn't been possible.

Of course, the Lankans are there merely to whet the appetite ahead of the blockbuster Ashes series.

Four years ago, England arrived in Australia just days before the first Test and claimed subsequently that the lack of warm-up games was a contributing factor to the 5-0 whitewash they suffered.

This time, they get the chance to acclimatise properly and will have three-day matches against Western Australia and South Australia ahead of the opening Test at the Gabba on 25 November.

After the Ashes will come the Twenty20 and 50-over matches, with the summer of cricket (at least the international part) done and dusted by the first week of February, just ahead of the ICC World Cup in India.

Cricket fans in Melbourne will have to get used to a different schedule. The Boxing Day Test remains in place, or course, but the MCG will host an Australia-Sri Lanka one-dayer on 3 November, barely five weeks after the AFL Grand Final. That's not a heap of time for ground to recover from a taxing footy season and for the drop-in pitches to settle. It could also mean bitterly cold weather for a cricket match but then again, the weather for the Twenty20 match at the MCG tonight (Friday) is also shaping as positively Arctic.

The last big MCG match for the summer is on 16 January. That's the day before the start of the Australian Open and about four weeks earlier than the last MCG clash for this summer.

Indeed, this summer's international series lasts for so long that Melbourne's two big sporting passions go head to head later this month, with an Australia West Indies one-dayer at the MCG clashing with a Collingwood-St Kilda NAB Cup clash at Etihad Stadium.

Based on the dwindling interest in 50-over cricket, the first 'official' game of footy for the year in Melbourne might just draw a bigger crowd.