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Loading ...21 times in 8 months? 21 times against ONE country. This is getting ludicrous.
May criticises cricket’s schedule
By Will last year, at the end of February Leave a comment on this post
Tim May has criticised the ICC regarding the sheer number of matches countries are expected to play, highlighting the ridiculous schedule facing Australia and India later this year. The two sides will face each other 21 times in 8 months, but their packed intinerary is just the peak of the mountain. We’ve known this would happen for years yet the ICC continue to pile on the matches and honour the boards’ and TV companies’ greed, at the players’ and spectactors’ expense.
“They were already playing each other 18 times and now they’ve thrown in another three (in Ireland),” May said. “We’re concerned about that. Players have a passion for the game and want to maintain that passion every time they play. But it’s becoming harder to play every game as though it’s their last.
“No one wants a two-bit product where blokes are only giving 75 percent because that’s all they’ve got left. Or because they need to pace themselves for more games coming up.” May, who has criticised the heavy workload on players in the past as well, also took a shot at the upcoming World Cup, arguing that it dragged on purely because of TV broadcasters.
“Our World Cup is too long,” he said. “Everybody bar the people who sell the TV rights believe we could compress it. The ICC sells the rights for significant amounts of money and obviously the broadcasters want to get their money’s worth.
One-day cricket is the commercial world’s gem. Short, fast, glamorous, colourful, loud, they are a huge revenue-generator for TV companies and the ICC. But with excess comes complacency, comes boredom. Do the players really want to be playing this amount of cricket? Of course not. Do the public care enough to sit through a seven-match humdrumathon after witnessing a Test series which, with the exception of India, remains the game’s pinnacle of entertainment? I doubt it. One-dayers should be the icing on a series’ cake, not a whole extra extravagant meal in itself.
One-day cricket is a victim of its own success, its shelf-life coming to an end. If nothing is done to address the sheer quantity of matches being played, we could well see strike action from the players in a desperate attempt not only to remain fit, but mentally sane. I hope so, too, because the ICC are far too one-eyed to see sense unless a problem smacks them in the chops.
Patrick Kidd has his own thoughts over at Line and Length. Offer yours below.
Tags: australia, ftp, future-tours-programme, ICC, india, intensity, one-day-cricket, tim-may |
12 Responses to “May criticises cricket’s schedule”
February 25th, 2007 at 9.45 pm
February 25th, 2007 at 11.01 pm
ludicrous is an understatement this is downright idiotic.
newyas people in bcci are always well known for that.The unvieling of cricket india’supposedly new world cup outfit clearly states this fact
February 26th, 2007 at 1.08 am
Money runs the game, and players are merely vehicles to make outrageous sums of cash for cricket boards.
The whole over-exposure of ODI makes you ponder the future of series, with the success of international 20/20. In five years will we see a two-match Test seris, with seven ODI’s and five 20/20s layered on top?
February 26th, 2007 at 6.29 am
when we all were kids we heard the story about the geese and golden eggs. Methinks these Board people have not.
tom- I think we will.ulp.
February 26th, 2007 at 6.33 am
I agree Will - icing onthe cake. A brilliant too shakester - Goose that laid the golden egg - perfect.
There is usually a lot of “boredom” by the end of a triangular series down here in Aus too. I far prefer the “best of 5″ style played in most other countries these days.
February 26th, 2007 at 6.45 am
yeah, best of 5 works really well for me. 7 is too many, and a month long triseries loses its edge.
bloody hell, before India gets to Australia in december, they would have played at least 10 ODIs in the previous 4-5months. ouch. expect more ‘rotations’ and ‘experiments’
February 26th, 2007 at 7.44 pm
From a fitness angle, it’s the non-stop nature of all cricket that is the biggest worry. Players just about have time to recover from series when another arrives. In the old days players could go for it in the season because they had months off afterwards.
Players need to insist on proper rest periods or injuries will get even worse.
February 26th, 2007 at 9.13 pm
The One-Day Series need to be privatized so that players represent clubs rather than countries and it becomes more like a baseball season where there are 160 games per season and the bowlers are rotated in and out so that they don’t have to perform daily. The other advantage is that a winner every year could be crowned.
The Test Series and one-day world cup could be held seperately like the Soccer world cup and European cup.
February 27th, 2007 at 9.30 am
I’m not sure that ‘with the exception of India, (one-day cricket)remains the game’s pinnacle of entertainment’. Certainly not if you look at crowd numbers, where England is the only country where you could sustain an argument that Test cricket is more ‘popular’ than one-day cricket. Indeed, the only countries which regularly see decent crowds for Tests are England, Australia and (sometimes) West Indies and India. The crowds for Test cricket in Pakistan and New Zealand are utterly absymal.
February 27th, 2007 at 6.57 pm
Is there too much cricket being played for the good of Bill Frindall, I’d like to know.
According to “Stump Bearders” #140 on the Beeb website, the winner of a one-day international between England and India was, er, Australia.
February 27th, 2007 at 7.40 pm
*puts up a cross with his fingers*
Baseball No! Let’s not Americanize anything! They’re clearly the WORST at over-playing with the sole purpose of driving revenues sky high.
February 27th, 2007 at 9.30 pm
Here are some stats: -
When the first World Cup kicked off in June 1975, there had only been 18 ODIs played since the first ever one in 1971.
When the second World Cup started in June 1979, there had still only been 60 ODIs.
There have been over 18 ODIs in the last three weeks alone.
There have already been 60 ODIs so far this year.
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