When Test matches leave you feeling empty

When it is high summer again all this will be forgotten. It will be as if the three-day fiascio at Lord's and the swathes upon swathes of empty seats at poor, ill-treated Durham never happened. All will be well with the world (except of course if England have been inadequate in the World Twenty20 and are being roundly cuffed in the Ashes, when it will be too awful to contemplate).

But however this summer – the Great Exhibition – pans out, the follies of May should not be submerged in the Riverside outfield. The events of the past week have provided an important lesson. It is a lesson about scheduling, about marketing and about how to leave 'em wanting more. It is about the survival of Test cricket. This was brought into stark focus by Chris Gayle, the captain of West Indies, who said he would not be sad if Test cricket died.

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Whatever it may feel like, England are playing no more Tests now than they have done in the past 10 years. In 2000 they played 12, in 2009 they played 12. Only in 2002 and 2006 (both winters spent in Australia) did they play as many as 14. Nor are they playing many more one-day internationals, 21 in 2000, 21 in 2009. Not enough to make them any good, some might say. Only in 2007, the year of the World Cup, did they play as many as 34.

But there seems to be too much cricket, there is certainly too much this year and there is worryingly too much of dodgy quality. The England and Wales Cricket Board have now denied that the two Test matches this month (a Test series finished before the FA Cup final has been played – who would have thought it?) were arranged for commercial reasons.

Indeed, they went out of their way the other day to insist that the two desultory matches were being staged purely for the benefit of cricket, to further the Test career of Ravi Bopara. Poppycock, of course. The ECB trawled the world looking for someone to play and gave the impression that Paraguay would have done. The easy fall guy is Sky. When the ECB are not mounting the defence that their schedule is designed for purely cricketing reasons, they invoke their broadcasting contract. If the ECB had cancelled this series, as they should have done, the chief executive David Collier said they would have been in breach of their broadcasting contract.

This is true. But it is the ECB, not Sky, who decide the schedule. There is evidence that Sky are becoming miffed at being permanently cast in the role of the bad guy. Of course they are influential and for the money they are paying they ought to be. But they offer a certain amount of money for a certain number of games.

England have been playing seven Test matches each home summer since the turn of the century. That is now being reduced to six in some years. The number should be five or six in every year as happened quite happily from the mid-Sixties.

Test cricket needs space to breathe, which patently it is not being given at present. The Ashes, for instance, start on 8 July and finish on 24 August. Five matches in 47 days. There is no time to smell the roses, no chance for either anticipation or reflection.

In marquee series, these days against Australia, India and South Africa, England should play five matches. In other years, they should play three matches against each of the tourists. There is the tricky problem of Bangladesh but they are not going to disappear.

The ECB blame the ICC global events – one a year – for congesting fixtures. They like to think they are the chief protectors of Test cricket, heading off the Twenty20 Barbarians at the gate. But this needless series against West Indies has done harm which could have been prevented.

The start of the Ashes will bring more controversy because Cardiff is the venue for the First Test, for which no satisfactory cricket reason has been offered. Make no mistake, however it looks in high summer, Test cricket is fighting for its life and less has to mean more or there will not be any.