Full, but not filling

And they say travel broadens the mind. Almost as soon as India return home from Australia they will head for three one-day internationals in Bangladesh. In April they host South Africa and in May they fly to Zimbabwe. July and August mean a trip to Sri Lanka, September equals the Champions Trophy, and in October Australia arrive for four Tests. England turn up in November, before India nip across the border to take on Pakistan in the early part of 2009. A tour of New Zealand follows straightaway, May will be the month for a one-day tri-series in Sri Lanka, and the World Twenty20 Championships are due to be held in England in June. There is a vicious rumour that they then get a break before Australia pop in, again, for seven one-day internationals in October 2009. I feel tired just relaying the schedule. And if you've managed to follow India's itinerary over the next two years without lapsing into some form of vicarious jetlag, then you might appreciate that, while travel can broaden the mind, it can numb the senses too.

It used to be the case that England, doomed by a fluke of geography to play its home cricket between April and September when most other teams were enjoying a breather, were the only side consistently on the road or in the air. And it is still the case that they are busier than most: since the start of their 2006 summer, the only month until this one in which they did not play any cricket was November 2007. But the rest of the world are catching up - with India, in thrall to the TV executives and all too aware of its own rupee-pulling power, leading the way and Australia, clinging gamely to India's financial coattails, not far behind. We used to be able to make some sort of sense of the international fixture list. Now there is only thing we can say with any degree of assurance: if it's May, it must be a spurious one-day triangular in Ireland.

For all the stipulations of the International Cricket Council's Future Tours Programme (FTP), which states that tours need contain no more than one Twenty20 international, two Tests and three 50-over matches, the reality is that money talks louder than the threat of burnout. This malaise was once the preserve of female teenage tennis players, of course, but the national boards' smash-and-volley approach to staging tours and tournaments - cram 'em in one after another and a couple should reap dividends - has afflicted rugged male cricketers too. Some injuries, of course, can be ascribed to the frailty of the player in question: Shane Bond, Simon Jones, Shane Watson. But cricketers such as Andrew Flintoff and Shoaib Akhtar - box-office in any era - never seem to have time to recuperate from their niggles. And in the case of Marcus Trescothick, it is safe to say that the stress-related illness that has interrupted his England career, possibly for good, was not helped by living out of a suitcase for six years either.

No matter. In a recent interview with The Wisden Cricketer, Giles Clarke, the newly appointed chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, explained that less cricket was not the solution to the problem. "We're heading towards rotation, more specialists and different sides put out in different forms of the game and against different types of opposition," he said to raised eyebrows almost everywhere. When John Stern put it to him that squad rotation would only work for the Australians, who alone possess sufficient strength in depth, Clarke replied: "That's a perfectly legitimate comment, but all I can say is we're going to have to." Clarke - by all accounts a lively, engaging, bright man - comes from a business background, which tells you where his priorities lie.

And so we should expect more of the same. Imagine turning up on the first morning of the Headingley Test of 1948 to be told, "Sorry, Don Bradman is resting, but don't worry lad, he'll be back in time for The Oval." Even the phlegmatic folk of Yorkshire might have staged a riot. It took Bradman more than 20 years to play 52 Tests. Even when you consider that his career was interrupted by the war, the ratio of games per annum strikes the modern cricketer as an absurd luxury. Today, it seems, you are no-one unless you have played 100 Tests or scored 10,000 one-day runs. But inflation comes at a price. And that price is the frisson all cricket-lovers should feel at the start of every Test series.

The opportunism of the national boards means that the old certainties of the Test cycle are no more. Take England, who last year hosted a home series (four Tests, three ODIs and two Twenty20 matches) against West Indies that was not even required by the FTP. That took their tally of games against the second-weakest team currently playing Test cricket to 17 since the turn of the millennium; only Australia, with 20 Tests, have been more regular opponents in that time, during which England have played only six Tests against New Zealand, a far grittier side than West Indies. But West Indies still command a cachet in the UK - despite dwindling levels of support for them among British-based Caribbeans and their general hopelessness against England since they won the Edgbaston Test in 2000. Since then, England have won 13 matches without reply - unthinkable in the era of the blackwashes. Money has ousted good sense to the extent that no-one especially cared when Michael Vaughan's side wrapped up another series thrashing at Chester-le-Street in June.

The repetitiveness has been compounded by thoughtless scheduling of a different kind. England are about to play six Tests in a row, away and home, against New Zealand, which will stretch the enthusiasm of even their most ardent fan and is not necessarily the best way to prepare for the visit of the 2009 Australians. In 2004 England played seven in succession against West Indies. The story is as unbalanced elsewhere. Since the start of 2000, Sri Lanka have played 10 Tests against Bangladesh and fewer against Australia, India, New Zealand and West Indies. Muttiah Muralitharan took part in nine of them, six of which were in Colombo - where, with the best will in the world, they must be sick to death of the poor old Bangladeshis - and claimed 76 wickets at less than 12 apiece, which are the kind of gratuitous numbers that give a bad name to statistics.

India, who are yet to host a home Test against financially unattractive Bangladesh, and Pakistan now seem to meet every few months or so, and seem unsure whether the latest series is supposed to be yet another historical step towards political friendship between two former arch-enemies or just another game of cricket. Having played one Test series against each other between the start of 1990 and March 2004, the sides have played one a year since then, not to mention 27 ODIs. The overall score in these games is 14-13 to Pakistan: almost certainly no-one knows this figure off the top of their head, because in the long run no one cares. And in the case of Australia v India, the blue-riband series once more following the Ashes whitewash a year ago, familiarity really has bred contempt. The big nations are so in awe of each other's worth in the marketplace that they have failed to bear in mind Oscar Wilde's definition of the cynic as a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Paradoxically, perhaps, we have lost our bearings to the extent that is has also become less easy to pass judgment on the quality of individual players. In less hectic times, Andrew Strauss might have had the chance to work on his driving outside the off stump against the ball shaping away from him; in 2007, just three years after a glittering entry onto the international stage, he was dropped for England's tour to Sri Lanka. And how good, for example, is South Africa's Hashim Amla? New Zealand think they know the answer: he has scored all three of his Test hundreds against them, as well as 524 of his 1,180 Test runs. But other nations might differ: against the rest, he averages a shade over 20. A compressed fixture list, in which New Zealand toured South Africa in both 2006 and 2007, has helped give the impression that Amla is pulling his weight more vigorously than he actually is.

Similarly Indian fans might have been persuaded to think more highly of the Pakistan wicketkeeper Kamran Akmal than do the rest of the world. Akmal has made four of his five Test centuries against the Indians, averaging nearly 44 in the process. Against everyone else, the figure slips to 27. Will the real Strauss, Amla and Akmal please stand up? Will the schedule ever allow them to?

Some will argue that cricket's status means it can never enjoy enough exposure. It is unrivalled as a national sport only in south Asia and arguably the Caribbean, although even in the islands its popularity is slipping. In the predominantly white nations, football, rugby and other ball games all challenge its dominance and usually surpass it. But what are we doing to the game when sides without their best players are operating in front of half-empty stadia for the umpteenth time in a couple of years and snarling like wild animals because they've grown sick of the sight of each other? The fixture list has become a mess. And if gets any more chaotic, the administrators will end up with the game they deserve.