Schedule prioritises money over player welfare – PCA

schedule-prioritises-money-over-player-welfare-–-pca
David Payne playing county cricket for Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire’s David Payne has played one one-day international for England

The Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) has called on the English game to make future changes to an “unrelenting” county schedule.

In the 2024 fixtures, there are a number of periods of congestion, particularly around the T20 Blast.

The PCA says this leads to “dangerous travel windows”, along with issues over physical and mental health.

“There is a feeling the game is prioritising commercial revenue over player welfare,” said the PCA.

In the schedule for the new season, announced on Thursday, counties will play the same amount of cricket as 2023 – at least 14 Championship matches, 14 in the Blast and eight in the One-Day Cup. Fixtures for The Hundred will also be announced in the new year.

However, the majority of Blast matches will be played between Thursdays and Sundays, meaning counties will often play matches on successive days, or three games in four days.

“There are many occasions on a T20 night where you finish a game at 10pm, then you drive home and don’t get back until 2am or 3am,” Gloucestershire and England left-arm seamer David Payne told BBC Sport. “It doesn’t seem right and is quite dangerous at times.

“We’re very aware of the challenges that cricket presents and there’s never a time when we would say there’s an easy solution to all of this.

“It really takes away from high performance. Players always want to do themselves justice on the pitch and perform to the best of their ability, but the scheduling doesn’t allow for that.”

In mid-June, Payne’s Gloucestershire are due to play away at Glamorgan in the Blast on a Thursday, at home to Somerset in the same competition on the Friday, then travel to Scarborough on the Saturday to begin a four-day Championship match against Yorkshire on the Sunday.

“It does cause some massive burnout,” said 32-year-old left-armer Payne, who has played a single one-day international for England.

“You can train tired and play tired. You almost end up going through the motions. I would love to see a schedule that allows players to play at 100% of their ability.

“As a PCA and players, we might need to be firmer on our stance. As a collective, all the players go there with a strong view to say what we need going forward. We acknowledge it’s difficult for the counties, but I don’t know if there is an understanding from their side what it is like as a player.”

In 2021, former England captain Sir Andrew Strauss delivered a high-performance review that recommended cutting the amount of matches in the Championship and Blast.

In April of last year, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) described those proposals as “dead in the water”.

“It certainly isn’t easy,” said Payne. “Whichever way you do it, someone will be upset. My personal view would be to cut the Championship to 10 or 12 games, with three divisions of six. That would free up a whole month to spread the schedule, allowing players to get the rest they need.”

Tasked with the creation of the schedule, ECB operations manager Alan Fordham said: “We have enough days to fit in the jigsaw pieces, it’s just how well we can do that. The players will think they would like the pieces arranged better. We would always like to do it better from a performance point of view.

“The outline schedule was positively approved in August by the Professional Game Committee, that does have PCA representation on it.

“If you get in front of a group of players, you will always hear people seeking a better schedule. As a player, why wouldn’t you? We understand that. The balancing of cricketing aims and commercial aims is very delicate and we deal with it the best we can.”

In a statement, PCA chief executive Rob Lynch said: “The announcement of the 2024 fixtures is a reminder that the men’s domestic calendar in England and Wales is unsustainable and is in need of reform for the interests of current and future professional cricketers and therefore the future of our game.

“We are aware the ECB acknowledges the schedule is not ideal and following recent game-wide conversations, we understand the game has an ambition to look seriously at the 2025 fixture list.

“We have heard this commitment in the past and the professional game has not delivered. Collectively, we need to act to advance player welfare to future-proof our sport.”

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