Fletcher calls for fewer Tests - again

Duncan Fletcher says England must play fewer home Tests if the ECB decide to increase the number of Twenty20 internationals. The ECB has already scheduled two Twenty20 matches against next year's touring sides - Sri Lanka and Pakistan - after England's success against Australia on Monday in front of a capacity 15,000 crowd at The Rose Bowl. Now Fletcher, England's coach, is concerned that seven home Tests will be too many for his charges in the middle of an already packed schedule.

"It's a very difficult decision to make," Fletcher told reporters on Wednesday, "but if they're going to introduce Twenty20 cricket then they have to look at reducing the numbers of Test matches so they can fit in three Twenty20 games into a five-day period. One of the forms of the game has got to suffer in order to benefit the other. We play seven Test matches in a summer so, maybe we have to play five or six or whatever it is. We can't carry on playing seven Tests, then the equivalent of seven to ten one-dayers and then another three or four Twenty20 games but it's just too much."

It's not the first time that Fletcher has raised concerns about the number of Tests England have to play. At the end of last summer he called for fewer Tests to make way for more one-day games to give the players decent breaks.