Greed could kill Test cricket

Shahid Afridi's casual announcement last night that he is "retiring" from Test cricket to concentrate on his World Cup preparations, is the loudest hint yet that a rebellion is growing against the incessant demands of international cricket. The hazard lights have been flashing for years, but Afridi's decision is a klaxon that the game can no longer afford to ignore.

The identity of the player matters less than the thinking behind the decision. Afridi's Test form in recent months has been magnificent, and his absence will be a sad loss to a resurgent team - particularly in England in three months' time. That he should pack it all in, however, in the prime of his career - albeit on an apparently temporary basis - implies a worrying schism is brewing in the world game.

The international calendar is overloaded to the point of absurdity - that much is abundantly clear. It is common-place these days for touring sides to arrive in a country while their hosts are still wrapping up a series elsewhere, or failing that, for squads to shift from timezone to timezone with barely a pause to synchronize watches. For all the magnificence of Bangladesh's current challenge against Australia, one wonders what might have happened had the Aussies been given time to acclimatize after their endeavours a week earlier in South Africa.

And the demands just keep getting worse. Last week, for instance, the BCCI announced it would be adding 25 offshore one-day internationals to India's already rammed itinerary - the majority, undoubtedly, will be against Pakistan. It was a move greeted with understandable dismay by the men whose duty it is to stick to that treadmill day-in, day-out. Cricinfo has learned that not even India's 4-0 clean-sweep was enough to appease their taskmasters, who were concerned that to rest key players in the dead-rubber matches that followed would offend the relevant hosting associations.

Something, clearly, has got to give. And as far as the Asian market is concerned, there can be only one loser. One-day cricket is king on the subcontinent, especially in Pakistan where attendances at Test matches have been little short of woeful for years. The glitz, the glamour and the professional satisfaction that Afridi and his contemporaries rightly crave can only be realised in front of those seething floodlit audiences. Now that Afridi has set his precedent, the lure of the floodlights could well open the floodgates.

Such a prospect has horrific ramifications, not least because the ten Test-playing nations have such vastly polarised priorities. For English audiences in particular, nothing can rival a good old-fashioned Test match, and though it sounds churlish to say it, the gulf between their Test and one-day exploits cannot be explained by inexperience alone. The joy of last summer's Ashes stemmed from the knowledge that they were competing with their most like-minded opponents. One-day cricket has never captured the nation's affections, and probably never will.

So what's a game to do? Should we expect all elite players to plough on and on and on through the good days and the bad, risking the sorts of family-based traumas that may or may not have befallen Marcus Trescothick this winter, or burning out like comets in flash-bang five-year careers, or worse, playing on long after the passion has dimmed, and caring so little for each contest that disgust and disillusionment takes hold amid a new wave of match-fixing scandals?

Make no mistake, this a worrying time for the game. It was the insidious spread of meaningless one-day tournaments that brought the game to its knees at the start of the millennium, and all the while that the ICC turns a blind eye to the latest gathering of storm-clouds, they are inviting another disaster.

Afridi may actually have hit upon the only way to end this insanity once and for all. The game is nothing without its drawcard players. But why do I feel that Test cricket will be the bigger loser?