Players may be forced to resort to drugs - May

Tim May, the Federation of International Cricketers' Associations (FICA) chief executive, has warned that international players may be forced to resort to performance-enhancing drugs to cope with the demands of too many games. The ICC's new schedule for international cricket has been labelled "a disaster" that would leave the world's leading players exhausted and harm the integrity of the game.

Speaking to The Wisden Cricketer, May cautioned against the punishing year-round commitment that players face: "The FTP is a disaster because it puts no upper limit on the amount of cricket that can be scheduled. There are five or six guys in the five leading sides in the world who play Tests and ODIs and they are being flogged. You only have to look at the doping record in baseball to see that recovery, not enhanced power, is the motivation for most drug misuse. The more we push players the more they might look at options."

May, a former Australia offspinner, referred to the FTP as a "play-travel-play-travel-play-fall over" schedule that didn't consider the players. "They [cricketers] are the ones who make the difference between a 10,000 crowd and a sell-out; they are the ones who the broadcasters and commercial partners pay for," he said. "They are exhausted and they are not going to take much more."

Jacques Kallis, the South African allrounder, has endorsed May's harsh criticisms. "The amount of cricket we play is way too much," he told the website SuperCricket.com. "They need to cut down the Future Tours Programme, otherwise teams are going to end up resting their top players if it stays the way it is. But the public want to see the best players, so it's a big problem."

Kallis pointed out that allrounders were particularly over-worked. "For allrounders its definitely too hard a schedule. It's killing them," he said. "And young players won't want to be an all-rounder if they see how quickly you get worn out. It would be better to go the route of being a specialist batsman or bowler. We need scientific research on how many matches would be ideal. There needs to be a balance and I'm sure we need less cricket. It's overkill - the public are already saying that."