ICC refuses to act on player burn-out

The volume of cricket being played by international cricketers was on top of the agenda yesterday as the International Cricket Council held its annual meeting at Lord's with eight of the game's 10 captains.

While there was sympathy towards the demands put on players, and a realisation that the number of games played has reached saturation point, there was no indication that there will be a reduction in the amount of international cricket played.

Nowhere have the pressures of playing international cricket been more clearly visible than with last weekend's decision by Graham Thorpe to retire from one-day cricket. His reasons were because the physical and social demands of playing both one-day and Test cricket had become too much and one of them had to be sacrificed. It is a worrying sign that one of the game's leading players is prepared to make such a decision just six months before its most prestigious tournament, the World Cup.

The England fast bowler Darren Gough, who missed the first three Test matches of the summer against Sri Lanka with a knee injury, does not feel that Thorpe will be the last to make such a decision. He said: "I believe Graham Thorpe has made the right decision and one that more and more will be forced into over the next few years." He went on to say: "An international player at both Test and one-day levels will probably get a maximum of four weeks off in any 12-month period. The strain on the body alone is enormous and it is going to get harder and harder. In the future I don't see many playing careers extending beyond four or five years."

Malcolm Speed, the chief executive of the ICC, was present at the meeting and stressed that the board was keen to accommodate the concerns of players and the amount of cricket they play but this had to be weighed up against playing enough games to ensure that the finances of the game remain healthy. This would then allow all the individual boards to continue to invest money into the game all the way down to grass-roots level.

Attempting to sell any product is hard but, in a market place as competitive as sport, the quality of the show is paramount. It is vital that the sport is regularly seen live and on television but the last thing supporters want to see are games when the best players are no longer competing because they have had to make a similar decision to that of Thorpe and Allan Donald, who retired from Test cricket so he could concentrate on the one-day game. International matches should be special occasions when every player is playing at his peak, not everyday occurrences, where the quality of the product is diluted.

Looking in the Wisden Almanack, the bible of cricket, one can see that the amount of international cricket played over the last 10 years has more than doubled. In 1990-91 there were 26 official Test matches and 44 one-day internationals played in the year. This adds up to 174 organised days of cricket. However, by the time the 2000-01 version of the Almanack was published, 51 Test matches and 132 one-dayers, adding up to 387 days of cricket, were now being played over the same period.

Because of this rate of increase, the ICC is suggesting that the amount of cricket played in the forseeable future should be limited to around 14 Test matches and 25 one-day internationals a year. This adds up to approximately 95 days of cricket and such news will not have brightened the England captain Nasser Hussain's day as he, more than any other leader, has expressed strong concerns over player burn-out. England only had 69 days of cricket in 1990-91 and 83 in 2000-01, so things are only going to get tougher.