He thought Twenty20 cricket would make an impression, and then disappear as quickly as it had appeared.

"When T20 first started, I thought it would be best used to market and promote the other formats of the game but that was it," says the former Australian Test captain. "I didn't expect it to last as long as it has."

And now? Now Ponting is one of the voices describing a match that is punctuated by pyrotechnics and flamethrowers and Tainted Love between overs. A game in which the bails and stumps light up, and a kid in the outer eating a watermelon breaks the internet.

As the Big Bash League draws to a close, its unrivalled popularity this summer has picked up the conventional wisdoms about sport and sports entertainment and dumped them squarely on their arse.

For starters, it is rating through the roof – more than 1 million viewers nationally. In the five capital cities, it is about 738,000. That is more than your average Friday night match in the NRL (578,000) and AFL (631,000). That is more than the Test series against the West Indies (694,000) and New Zealand (733,000).

Oh, and it is a whole lot more than the A-League's average of 51,000.

Little wonder that other networks, including Nine, are eyeballing the BBL broadcast rights when they are next available in two years. Privately, Nine see it as a potentially great competitor to the Australian Open on Seven during late January.

Personally, I'm not a massive Big Bash fan. I struggle to switch on.

Network Ten's coverage, especially the insights from Ponting, Adam Gilchrist and Mark Waugh, is superb.

But, like a lot of cricket fans, I cannot engage. I love a broken bat and a ramp shot and a scorching six into the second tier of the grandstand as much as anyone, but if the Sixers or the Thunder do not make the semis, am I going to be kicking cans for the rest of the week?

But, as many people keep pointing out, it is not just about me. A cursory glance of the boundary at the SCG on Saturday night, as the Sixers and Thunder took part in the local derby, showed exactly who it is about.

It's about The Children. There they were, in their dozens, elbowing each other out of the way to get Doug Bollinger's autograph between deliveries.

As anyone who has attended a BBL match will know, it is a different vibe to other cricket fixtures, especially the yobbo one-day crowd where young blokes have had a skinful by the time they get to the ground.

Instead, there are many young families. There is a stack of stuff for the kiddies to do outside the ground, and the whole night is over and done with within four hours. The ticket prices, according to those who actually pay for them, are affordable: $45 for a family pass.

It is for this reason that the BBL can only help other formats of the game – not detract from it. Twenty20 will not kill Test match cricket. It can only help it.

"It can't hurt the overall game," says Ponting. "Everyone says no one likes one-day cricket anymore, and the Test match crowds are dropping off. At the end of the day, you have more people watching cricket like never before. Cricket as a whole has never been in better shape. One format was always going to start cannibalising the other, but I think it will actually start to regenerate fans back into the format as well."

That said, this summer has again highlighted the frightening imbalance between bat and ball, with the size of bats and flat drop-in pitches conspiring against the leather flingers. Australia consistently chasing down 300-plus totals in this one-day series against India has almost become mundane because it is so predictable.

What next for the BBL? There is talk of expanding the tournament.

"I know there's been talk of expansion and more teams, but I wouldn't be messing with something that's been as good as it is," Ponting says. "Even when you talk to the international players: it's a short, condensed tournament on the best grounds in Australia. If you start stretching it out, I'd be having second thoughts of that."