Saturation coverage

Boys play football in Chittagong on the washed-out fourth day of the Bangladesh-India Test. The weather was not unexpected, but the series was scheduled regardless © AFP

In an interview in The Times yesterday, Malcolm Speed, the ICC's chief executive, warned that "some of our members need to be very careful with the amount of additional international cricket they schedule". Twenty-four hours earlier Dav Whatmore, Bangladesh's outgoing coach, had reflected on the rain-blighted Test against India and said: "Schedules are cramped - over cramped if you ask me - so I don't know how we are going to fit everything in."

You might be forgiven for thinking that after a bloated World Cup, the appetite for cricket, especially the more instant and forgettable one-day variety, was sated and a rest was needed. While that might be the case as far as the public are concerned, national cricket boards take a quite different view.

The circus had no time to catch its breath before two more Test series began. So packed is the calendar that Bangladesh had no choice but to host India at a time of year rain was guaranteed. It's an increasing problem. Last year South Africa hosted New Zealand in cold and foggy late May, two months later than any Test had been played in the country before. Next month, the Afro-Asia Cup is being staged in southern India when the monsoon will have hit the region.

In a crazy three-week period from late June, not only are England playing West Indies, but Ireland are hosting India and South Africa before those two countries meet in three ODIs in neutral Belfast. Pakistan play Scotland on July 1 and, two days later, collide with India's magical mystery tour in Glasgow. West Indies take on Ireland, Netherlands and Scotland in a six-match quadrangular series in Belfast and Dublin in early July.

All this comes at a time when players' associations and the ICC are warning about player burnout. Spectator burnout, as evidenced by dismal crowds at the World Cup, is not far behind.

The reason for the mass of one-dayers is cash. The real money comes from broadcast deals, and boards, with India at the vanguard, are no longer willing to be constrained by the limitations of its own seasons. India signed a lucrative US$219 million deal with Zee TV in 2006 which requires them to play 25 'home' ODIs outside India in each of the next five years. Those are in addition to all their domestic and Future Tours Programme commitments. The net result is that the Indian side is beginning to resemble the Harlem Globetrotters more than a national cricket team, playing anywhere and everywhere they can, regardless of season or setting.

Other boards are not far behind, but none so far have gone so far down the route of selling the game's soul so blatantly. Lalit Modi, the BCCI's vice-president, is unapologetic. "I don't agree with the fatigue factor," he said. "We are playing the same amount of cricket as in the past. It's just that we have marketed it better."

What he overlooks is that the toll on players, who spend more time traveling than they do playing, is crippling. TV companies demand the best cricketers, and even with superb medical back-up, the length of the careers of the stars is shrinking by the year. The game is eating them up at an alarming rate.

It's a recipe for apathy and also for a resurgence of match-fixing

The quality of the cricket is also suffering. A tri-series, such as the recent one between Pakistan and Sri Lanka at Abu Dhabi, is almost instantly forgettable. If cricketers are asked to play so often in meaningless games, it is almost impossible for them to fire on all cylinders all the time. Moderate matches will lead to the public, who are not exactly starved of sporting alternatives, deserting the game. It's a recipe for apathy and also for a resurgence of match-fixing.

The ICC are powerless. It sets the FTP but what happens in between is entirely out of its control. And with millions of dollars to be made, the boards are hardly about to exercise any self restraint.

A re-think will only happen when either television says enough or the players do. The players might moan but they are well paid and they will largely do as they are told. TV is driven by the bottom line, and so only when audiences turn off and advertisers walk away will it start to go off cricket.

In that regard TV and the national boards are very similar. Both are driven by money and neither cares about the long, or even medium, term future of the game. They will bleed it dry. The difference is that TV can move on, the national boards can't, and hundreds of millions of cricket lovers will have to live with the consequences.