ADAM Gilchrist agrees with Ricky Ponting that there is too much cricket being played, but warns it is spectators as well as players who risk burn-out.

The former Australia wicketkeeper is in India and has been giving his thoughts on the state of the game.

Ponting and coach Tim Nielsen had expressed their frustration at the Champions League schedule forcing three NSW players to fly in late for the first one-day international and the captain had also suggested a seven-match one-day series was too long.

“The scheduling has been a concern, especially in the last six weeks,” Gilchrist said. “I agree with Ricky, it is difficult to get the balance right. For the administrators, it is a difficult juggling act and something has to be done.

“We are playing too much cricket. We need to monitor it. I am concerned about the spectator fatigue. It must be difficult for them to keep up with all the variations of the game. And then the injuries mean the players have to perform a delicate balancing act, too.”

Injuries have felled half a dozen Australian players. Tim Paine’s broken finger adds him to a list that includes James Hopes, Brett Lee, Callum Ferguson, Nathan Bracken, Michael Clarke and Brad Haddin. Gilchrist said the players also needed to manage their time better and needed to be aware that the IPL cannot take precedence over a longer career.

“The burn-out issue is there, but then the player has to be smart about management,” he said.

“The lucrative dollars are there, but you have to be successful for the national team to reap the rewards in tournaments like the IPL and the Champions League.

“Here, too, we need to monitor the youngsters. Ricky Ponting, for example, has managed things so well. He gave more time to the national team.” The Australian captain, like his vice-captain, Clarke, stayed out of the last IPL to concentrate on preparation for the Ashes Read more…

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In the middle of the one-day series that finished at the weekend, a fellow scribe, someone who is just about as far away from the archetype of the cynical hack as it is possible to be, a man whose sense of humour and of the absurd is never far away, looked at his blank laptop and said: “I love this game, I really do, but I just can’t take any more of it this season.”

On the same day I had given my godson a ticket for his first international match at Lord’s. He could not have been more excited. When I saw him at the end of the day his sense of wonder was undiminished. Only the result was a bummer, he said.

It is a difficult business for administrators to balance the cricket weariness of players and pundits against the enthusiasm of followers who might see, at best, one or two games a summer (and at the ECB’s prices, who can afford more?). Responding to the criticisms of the NatWest Series that completed the longest international summer in living memory, Giles Clarke, the chairman of the ECB, had a point when he said that the appetite for such matches remained strong.

Seventeen thousand turned up at Durham on Sunday to watch a game in which the only interest was a ghoulish one — whether England could avoid a 7-0 whitewash.

Against these excellent ticket sales, and the greed of the players (and players’ associations) who cannot see that turning out for every Tom, Dick and millionaire weakens fatally their case for burnout, administrators must realise that schedules, domestically and internationally, are stifling standards, which will, in turn, eventually diminish sales. When coaches must rest top players, or in the case of Tim Nielsen, of Australia, rest themselves, overkill is not so much a Read more…

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ONCE upon a time this would have been important. Australia leads the 50-over series against England 2-0.

This is presumably of mild significance to the players’ close family and a smattering of their friends but that would be about it.

Merv Hughes, the tour guide who helps pick Australian sides when not counting heads on the bus to the London Tower, might have poked his noggin in at Lord’s on Sunday night to take a gander and jot down a few thoughts. Like who is Callum Ferguson? Why is Brett Lee still here? Who brung Adam Voges?

The legitimacy of this seven-match series is a mystery, too, to the commentators. They began Sunday’s broadcast with a debate about the relevance of 50-over cricket, whether it should be overhauled, shortened, split into innings of 20 overs. Michael Holding made a rather valid point that to reduce 50-over cricket to a 40-over fixture was not to modify 50-over cricket but abandon it.

Shane Warne thinks this form of cricket is dead and he is doing his best to bury it. Test cricket and Twenty20 are the only forms worthy of pursuit. Dean Jones, an aggressive thinker about the game, says the sporting community is tired of the format and wants it reduced to capture the rush of Twenty20. He says South Africa and England do not play it in their domestic fixtures and Australia should give it away after its sponsorship commitments finish.

It is a game that has lost its purpose. The shorter 20-over game gives supporters Read more…

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