Fleming calls for calendar shake-up to stop burn-out

The International Cricket Council (ICC) must consider shaking-up the calendar to prevent player burn-out, said New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming.

Speaking after an ICC meeting with eight of the 10 Test-playing nations' captains at Lord's on Monday, Fleming stressed that players need more time to recover after games.

"We raised concern about the amount of time between games, we relate a lot of that to injuries and the stress being put on players, and if the volume of cricket is going to remain at this level a bit more care must be taken with scheduling," Fleming told a news conference.

"We appreciate the marketing side of the game is very important and the volume of cricket is very important and by reducing it we reduce the amount of income in the game.

"But it's catch 22. We understand that in professional sport there are going to be sacrifices but we want the ICC to share our concerns about the amount of cricket that is being played.

"It's not so much the Test matches I am concerned about, it's more the one-dayers and the need to put out as many as possible. It places too much demand on players."

Player burn-out has become a controversial issue with several cricketers retiring from one form or other of the international game in recent years citing fatigue or withdrawing from tours for personal reasons.

England batsman Graham Thorpe was the latest to retire from international one-day cricket at the weekend, saying he could not continue playing both versions of the game.

ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed said the consensus among the captains present at Lord's was that the volume of cricket played had "gone about as far as it can go".

"The captains asked the ICC to look at whether there can be a break in the scheduling and we're happy to take their concerns on board," said Speed.

"When we look at the scheduling over the next five years, if we could limit it so that each country, say, played no more than 14 Test matches and something like 25 or 26 one-day internationals, that might be achievable."

The implementation of anti-corruption measures was also discussed, with Anti-Corruption head Paul Condon outlining the progress made in the last year.

Fleming said the captains -- who also included England's Nasser Hussain, India's Sourav Ganguly, Pakistan's Waqar Younis and South Africa's Shaun Pollock -- were pleased with Condon's 'positive spin'.

"We're very happy with what's been put in place. We have felt the force of that in the last couple of series we have played," Fleming said.

"I believe the direction the game is going, we all know that it was at crisis point (but) in the last 12 months there has been a definite shift in the positive.

"As players we have been pleased by that because there had been a lot of slurring of performances and that affected us in many ways."

Mail Cricket Editor