Is crazy scheduling a threat to Test standards?

A true veteran of the county scene, Mark Ramprakash has been playing first-class cricket since 1987. The domestic game has gone through many changes since then, not the least of which has been an increasingly crowded schedule, exacerbated by the advent of Twenty20 cricket. County cricketers increasingly find themselves switching between formats with little or no time for readjustment, a situation that Ramprakash finds very troubling, and he warns, in his blog for The Cricketer that "cricket’s authorities in this country are aiding and abetting the demise of Test match cricket by their continued insistence that we should play County Championship and Twenty20 matches right on top of each other".

One of the things that has always bugged me about how English cricket is perceived from outside is the view that we don’t take preparation seriously at county level – that another game and another innings will be along shortly so why worry? I think player preparation at county clubs has actually improved during the latter part of my own career – but where are we going now with the fixture list we have had to endure for the past couple of years?