By JMB
July 10 2006

There once was a time when if cricket was on the television I was sat infront of the screen. I am amazed that this isn't true anymore. Whether that's me or due to the fact that there's a cricket match a day on sky I'm not sure. There is a temptation when something is popular to over cook the pudding. We now have 7 one day interntaionals against the tourists instead of 3. We increase the number of Twenty20 matches until we cannot remember what a player looks like in whites.

Can you remember snooker after that Davis v Taylor epic Crucible final? The snooker administrators increased the number of tournaments until a week couldn't go by without snooker on the box. What happened - people got bored with snooker and the game has suffered. Sound familiar or does it sound ominous?

England is blessed to have a summer sport like cricket. In Flintoff, Pietersen, etc we have some of the finest talent in the world and the Ashes victory last year was one of the best summers of my life. So it comes as no surprise when the governing bodies up the ante. England players now play more cricket than ever before. There is a limit and we are nearing it.

If we do not put a halt to some of these fixtures now cricket will suffer. I watched most of the Sri Lankan One Day Series but did anyone other than Duncan Fletcher care who won the final two games?

There were many Johnny come lately's last summer who basked in the Ashes glory alongside supporters who actually know the difference between a googly and an arm ball. These fans are already disappearing but more importantly some of the others, who have always gone to the matches are going to disappear with them unless we think about fixture list a bit more.

We also risk burning out our brightest talents - look at the injury list now.