Players' association boss warns of burnout

Paul Marsh, the Australian Cricketers' Association chief executive, is worried a Twenty20 world championship would reduce the value of the game's broadcasting rights and push players towards burnout. A global tournament is being planned by the ICC, but Marsh is concerned by the extra demands the competition would place on participants.

"Whilst the addition of a Twenty20 world championship may provide short-term growth in media rights and other revenues, it is distinctly possible that there may be a long-term market shift away from one-day matches to Twenty20," Marsh wrote in an association newsletter. "If this were to happen one would assume the value of media rights would decrease, given the reduced length of the game, and therefore the reduced amount of advertising space available for sale."

Marsh said it was for these reasons the Pakistan and India boards had not embraced the ICC's idea, and he also wrote the players were already at "breaking point" with the amount of cricket being scheduled. The Australian reported Marsh pointed at the recent injury list of the Australia squad as evidence. Ricky Ponting, Andrew Symonds and Stuart Clark have already missed matches on the current tour of South Africa while Graeme Smith's side suffered badly during the Test and one-day series earlier in the season.

Australia have only four days between the third Test against South Africa and the first match against Bangladesh in Dhaka on April 9. South Africa flew straight from India to Australia before Christmas and Sri Lanka, the third team in the VB Series, had a brief stopover in Colombo on the way to Bangladesh.