England play 17 tests in 2016, which is an obscene amount. The english summer features 47 days of international cricket, and between May 2016 and February 2017 England play 14 tests, 18 ODi’s and three T20i’s.

That is 91 days of international cricket.

Several England players will feature across all three formats for England; Root, Ali, Stokes, Hales (form dependent in tests), Finn and possibly others.

I could well have called this article: ‘Predicting when Roots back will crumble to dust’, but that seemed a touch melodramatic, and doesn’t quite paint the wider picture. How will Anderson get through the next year of cricket and play beyond, as he has stated he wants to do? 14 tests in 10 months is a huge amount. And, looking at the schedule, even around the Champions trophy in 2017 England still get 20 tests in 2017-2019. At this rate, if Root plays every test match before he is 25, he will have played 50 tests.

It is lucky we don’t have someone of Rabadas quality and youth, because if we did by the time he was 25 he would have been broken and battered by our schedule.

There are concerns over players who are injury prone at the moment anyway (Anderson, Broad, Finn, Wood, Root etc.), how will they pull through the next year, and then the year beyond that, and that.

There are other issues, if you have players who are constantly injured, then rotation happens more and the team is less settled. Playing injured for fear of losing your spot can also kill your career, though under the current management this does seem less likely.

In a year round schedule, if there is a chink in your game it is difficult to be able to step away and work on it; When Morgan took time out of the county championship to copped a lot of flak before he even batted again (and has played well since). Cook was forced to step away from the game when he was ejected out of the one day set up, and this time away helped build rebuild his test technique, and he is now somewhere near his best.

Bad form can also ruin your career, or delay it significantly. With limited time between tours, there is no way of correcting you game away from the limelight’s discussed above. You have to go away and rebuild in the county championship, and suddenly you have missed 10 tests, there are still question marks over your ability and someone else has your spot (Balance is a good example of this, one dodgy tour, and his spot is gone for the foreseeable future).

The one commonly touted argument for less test cricket is that it reduces the spectacle of the game if so many tests are played. This I disagree with because I haven’t seen much evidence to support this, the english game is very well followed.

However, there are upsides to 17 tests in a year. The fans. I love test cricket, and the more its on the better. 85 days a year of test cricket? Hell yes. Most other fans i have spoken to agree, they want to watch as many England tests that are on offer.

It’s also very good for the very greedy ECB, who like vampires, suck blood out of every cricketing opportunity, whether it damages the host or not. The ECB are not skint, they have £80 million in reserve. They are not fighting to stay afloat. The TV deals are simply huge and the administration will take every opportunity to gain more money.

You could argue its good for the game, it makes cricket more accessible. Except that Sky shows nearly all the cricket, which is only accessible if you have a spare £50 a month kicking about.

I don’t think it is good for the team to play so much cricket, and its worse for the players (mainly the bowlers). As a fan, I love the idea of year round cricket. The solution: Give Ireland test status and let them play, so the summer can be full of tests without destroying Roots back.