I know the World Twenty20 was an enormous success. I know that the women did marvellously well to win their version of cricket’s latest popular vote-winner. Overwhelmingly the most important facts about the longest and oddest of all cricket seasons, however, were that England won an exciting and unpredictable Ashes series and that Durham, the county that produces its own fast bowlers, walked away with a second successive county championship.

The season ended yesterday in mainly beautiful weather with a second one-day trophy for Sussex, who had been relegated to the second division of the LV County Championship only three days earlier but retained the NatWest Pro40 title. Such perverse discrepancies, typical of professional sport though they may be, rather sum up the confused state of much of the game at the moment.

This, after all, was the summer when England regained the Ashes a fortnight after losing by an innings and 80 runs inside three days at Headingley Carnegie, then lost six out of seven one-day internationals to Australia before reaching the semi-finals of the Champions Trophy.

It was also the season when Andrew Flintoff rejected an England contract and the chairman of the players’ association (PCA) demanded that the ECB give the professionals more of a say in the programme of matches arranged for them. There will be one fewer county competition next year but virtually as many match days and vastly more international cricket in England than has been staged before.

David Collier, the ECB’s substantial yet sometimes apparently invisible chief executive, such is the outsize shadow of his chairman, Giles Clarke, has no doubt that the summer should be ending in a mood of elation.

“It was very pleasing to receive a note [from the International Cricket Council] describing the ICC WT20 as setting new standards for global events,” he said before departing at the weekend for the latest ICC tournament in South Africa.

“With capacity crowds throughout it was a huge success. To have our two teams winning the Ashes, the women’s team winning the World Cup and Claire Taylor being honoured as Wisden Cricketer of the Year made it a very special year.”

Nor is Collier prepared to accept, despite dwindling newspaper coverage, that domestic cricket is being overshadowed by the relentless commitments of the England men’s team.

“The increase in prize money for the championship was tangible commitment to making Test cricket and championship cricket the heart of our game,” he said. “We took strong issue with Vikram Solanki’s comments about the need for more player involvement in the domestic structure. There was a detailed 12-month consultation process in which Sean Morris of the PCA sat on the executive committee, Jason Ratcliffe on the cricket committee and all the county chairmen and directors of cricket had an impact on the voting. Thirteen of the 18 counties voted for a 40-over rather than a 50-over competition next year.”

There is no logic, however, in deciding to play no 50-over county matches next season, yet staging no fewer than 13 such games involving England, plus two Twenty20s and a couple more 50-over games between Pakistan and Australia.

In one way it is laudable that England should come to Pakistan’s rescue at a time of political turmoil in that country that threatens the future of cricket there. But did anyone even consider reducing England’s workload if such a gesture was to have any genuine altruism about it?

The real reason for packing them high and selling them cheap is that we now have nine Test-match grounds where once six were sufficient. Nine grounds in a more or less constant state of multimillion-pound development require to be filled as often as possible for the economics to work.

For all that the richest county, Surrey, finished third from bottom of the second division of the championship. Two below them, Leicestershire had the consolation of 1,203 runs at 60 from a future England batsman in 19-year-old James Taylor. Kent — and, after a thrilling run chase against Derbyshire on Saturday, Essex — will take the places of Worcestershire and Sussex. Like Durham, Kent won half their games, but Danish Kaneria took 75 of Essex’s wickets and they will miss him when Pakistan are here next season. They pipped Northamptonshire by a single point.

Nottinghamshire, with Chris Read, their captain and beneficiary to the fore, made sure of the second-place prize money, which was £125,000 more than Durham won for coming first last year. Somerset, third, drew 12 games, lacking not only Durham’s firepower but pitches with sufficient life. Too many bland pitches have become a serious problem.

Mark Robinson, the coach, said that the debilitating effect of playing so much high-pressure one-day cricket this season took its toll on Sussex’s squad, although, perhaps significantly, there is a much larger group of players on the professional staff at Hove now than there was when they won the third of three championships in five years in 2007.

With Surrey and Hampshire buying up available players and blossoming cricketers such as Chris Nash and Luke Wright already linked to other clubs by rumour, it will be crucial for Sussex not to lose the family feel that has been as much a part of their success as it has of Durham’s. The £1.8 million salary cap has come a little too late to prevent agents and ambitious players from seeking more money at different clubs.

Balance and stability are what the game needs at home and overseas. Instead, the nuclear effect on all countries of the Indian Premier League makes the prevailing mood one of restlessness and uncertainty, but the game is anything but static.

Participation figures among the young are up by 40 per cent in the ECB’s 1,600 focus clubs, there is seldom a spare seat at any big match and the governing body is unlikely to start cutting back while that remains true. It had no reserves before the Ashes were regained in 2005. Now it has £20 million in the bank for a rainy day and enough liquid cash to keep 18 clubs in business.

As long as they all remember that beating Australia away is the next target, and keeping England on top the ultimate aim.