Inzamam seeks rotation policy to avoid burn-out

While he personally has no regrets about the amount of cricket Pakistan has played recently, Inzamam-ul-Haq has stressed the importance of a rotation policy to prevent burn-out among his players. Pakistan, who have already had 55 playing days in the last six months, have another 75 lined up ahead of their departure to the Caribbean for the World Cup.

"In Pakistan, we intend to resort to rotational policy in the coming season, leading up to the World Cup, to avoid our best players getting burned out before the tournament. But the problem for us is that we are playing away from home," he told the Daily News. "We've to be very careful and decide how to rest our players and win at the same time. Winning is the best preparation for the World Cup."

Pakistan have a four-week break ahead of their first training camp for the England tour in July. "Given the amount of cricket being played these days we really can't complain," Inzamam said. "But the fact is that fatigue, lack of motivation and homesickness now combine to create a problem for the players who then struggle to maintain their consistency on the field. I fear by the time the World Cup starts, the players might be completely drained and some of the top teams might even be forced to appear in the extravaganza without some of their frontline players."

Inzamam said that more cricket was the demand nowadays and a part of his players' jobs, but gave the Indian example of pre-empting player exhaustion by rotating their players. He added that the fact both India and Pakistan played a majority of their cricket on the subcontinent, over the past six to eight months, had been a huge advantage as far as experimentation was concerned. "Players like Suresh Raina, Venugopala Rao, Sreesanth, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Ramesh Powar, Shoaib Malik and Mohammad Asif proved themselves as future prospects," he pointed out. " I mean we played Asif on the hard and bouncy Sydney track but he looked very mediocre as compared to his heroics in the last four months."

Inzamam will lead Pakistan to England for four Tests and five one-day internationals between July and September.