If the modern game can be defined as the post-Packer period, then there have been two cricketing empires in that time. The first, which dominated the 1980s and early 1990s, was West Indian. Its end was neat, since the home defeat inflicted by Mark Taylor's 1995 Australia team meant there was nothing Pinteresque about the pause between the end of one and the beginning of another.

That India's 2-0 defeat of Australia has just ended the second period of empire is not in doubt. Which is not to say that Australia will not be competitive in future; merely that the kind of dominance the cricket world has taken for granted for the past 13 years is over. It was not so much the defeat - many have tried and failed in India - but the manner of it that was significant. Australia looked bankrupt of ideas and firepower, with the result that they no longer carry the aura of invincibility. As soon as opposition teams smell an opportunity, that opportunity is more likely to be taken.

West Indies under Viv Richards had the most commanding presence of any team I played against - a mixture of power, aggression, righteousness and sheer physicality combined to induce something close to terror among opposition teams. I can remember well the England dressing-room at Headingley in 1991, silent and contemplative, as we waited for Richards to decide on his course of action having won the toss and having told Graham Gooch that he, Richards, would wait a while before making his decision.

It was as if he had smelt some fear and was allowing it to seep farther into our pores.

It was this reputation and aura that enabled West Indies to extend their dominance slightly longer than the quality of the team justified. Taylor knew this and as he and I chatted in the Perth dressing-room at the end of the 1994-95 Ashes series, he outlined how his team would beat them. We're stronger technically and mentally than they are, he said, and our fast bowlers are younger. As Steve Waugh stared down Curtly Ambrose on the way to a double hundred at Sabina Park and as Glenn McGrath peppered West Indies' tailenders to order, Taylor's plan came to fruition. And after we beat them, he said, so will everybody else.

Caribbean greatness, he knew, was built on flimsy foundations. West Indian administrators, like many home owners at present, failed to realise that assets could depreciate and they failed to invest for the future. Facilities and infrastructures were allowed to decay and little was done to try to ensure that the feeder streams continued to flow so that the main pool of talent would not run dry. The story of West Indian decline since 1995 - characterised by the recent claim that beating England in a three-hour Twenty20 match constitutes some kind of revival - is one of the saddest stories in sport.

While Australian dominance over the past 13 years has been based, like West Indies before them, on a happy confluence of a number of great cricketers in one generation, Australia's strength as a cricketing nation over a longer period of time has been systemic, which should ensure that its recession is a relatively shallow one. They will still be hard to beat. Top-class batsmen and fielders, unlike great bowlers, can be mass-produced and the strength of Australian school, club and state cricket will ensure such a production line continues. Excellence in batting and fielding has become, as Ian Chappell once said, institutionalised.

Bowling, though, is a different matter. Both West Indian and Australian empires were built on world-class bowling attacks. The West Indian version was one-dimensional and brutal, but in an era of no over-rate penalties and no limitation on bouncers, it was unbeatable. It still rankles with the West Indians of that period - and privately they call it a racist manoeuvre - that the rules were changed to stymie the advantage that four world-class quickies gave them. Racist or not, it can be taken as a measure of West Indian greatness that the rules were changed and the playing field levelled.

Australia's attack was different in character, built on the twin pillars of discipline and variety. In McGrath and Shane Warne, Australia possessed two of the greatest attacking and defensive bowlers rolled into one package, and without them Ricky Ponting was unable to stem the flow of runs in India. Brett Lee's trajectory is too flat to fill the void left by McGrath's departure and Stuart Clark and Mitchell Johnson are worthy but not world-class. That Warne is being touted to return - a move that would be disastrous for all concerned - shows the spin cupboard to be bare. The recent criticism of Ponting only emphasises how far a captain is reliant on his bowlers.

With Australia scrapping rather than dominating, the question is whether we are in for a period of flux, or whether anybody is ambitious enough, in this era of ephemeral pleasure, to commit themselves to producing the kind of sustained excellence that West Indies and Australia managed over a long period, the kind that is the prerequisite of imperial ambition. Rome was not built in a day.

Sri Lanka are well led by Mahela Jayawardena, have outstanding senior players, such as Kumar Sangakkara, a great bowler (but for how much longer?) in Muttiah Muralitharan and a potential one in Ajantha Mendis. Two things count against them: pace bowling, the lack of which means they will always be more vulnerable away from home, and the financial embarrassment of the board, which means that Sri Lanka's players will always have more than half an eye on the riches to be earned in India.

South Africa were grossly flattered in England this year. Their much-vaunted pace attack failed to deliver and while the batsmen were disciplined, it is difficult to see how they will dominate decent attacks and so open up enough games to force the kind of win ratio that West Indies and Australia enjoyed at their peaks. South Africa's progress will be judged over the coming months, but I suspect that Australia will put them in their place.

That leaves India and England, the two likeliest-looking candidates on the strength of pace bowling, attacking batsmanship and age profiles. India have a potential champion in Ishant Sharma, the first home pace bowler to win a man-of-the-series award in India since Kapil Dev in 1983, along with a decently stocked fast bowling cupboard and good spinners in Harbhajan Singh and Amit Mishra. England, too, are not short on firepower.

It was more than just wicket-taking ability, though, that brought West Indies and Australia their periods of dominance. Each had something extra in their leaders and group of senior players: hunger, passion, desire and single-minded drive to succeed whatever the cost. Neither India nor England have yet shown enough of that, which makes the forthcoming series such a tantalising prospect.

Barclay evokes nostalgic delight

This column does not plug ghosted books by cricketers with no literary ambition, which is why it is happy to recommend John Barclay's Life Beyond the Airing Cupboard, which was released at Lord's last evening.

This is not a book for those who are interested in big names and great events, although there is a smattering of that kind of thing when Barclay touches upon his experiences of managing England through a period of turmoil in the mid-1990s.

Rather, it is a book about English cricket as it used to be: pre-Thatcherite cricket, before the bean counters came in and the county game was forced to justify itself.

This is a book, I suspect, for the older generation: the newspaper-reading, county cricket-watching generation who mourn the loss of week-long county festivals and the vitality and variety produced by three-day cricket on uncovered pitches. Like all good books about sport, it is about more than that: it is about life, love and loss, too. Even better, it can just about fit into your jacket pocket.