Workload concerns highlight the changing pressures and priorities of cricket - Chris Waters comment

“We urge the game to come together because this issue cannot be kicked down the road for any longer.”

Harris was responding to a fixture list that looked more or less like the last one, and the one before that, and so on, with more women’s games now adding to the pressure.

He acknowledged “baby step progress” in the form of fewer back-to-back T20s across men’s and women’s cricket, down from 61 last summer to 54 next, but talked of “further, almost impossible periods that allow peak performance”.

He added: “This is unacceptable in a world where the awareness of mental and physical health of elite athletes needs to be prioritised given the professionalism and scrutiny in the modern era.”

Research this year showed that four-fifths of men’s players think the schedule causes them a physical concern, two-thirds say it affects their mental well-being, and three-quarters are worried about travel safety.

Joe Root stated that “the creation of minimum standards to protect travel windows and player welfare is non-negotiable”, with most players having requested - as a bare minimum - one day between T20s and three days between four-day contests to protect mental and physical condition and to give of their best.

What can be done? The answer, it strikes me, is very little – unless that same PCA which highlights the need to prioritise player welfare over a fixture list that prioritises commercial revenue is instead prepared to further compromise another “stakeholder” – the spectator.

For what alternative is there really, based on what the PCA is saying, to a heinous move towards reducing the number of four-day games and perhaps the number of first-class counties?

The Hundred is not going anywhere (a competition that takes out first-class cricket in August and reduces the 50-over Cup to a second-class squabble) and the players want to play in it anyway, boosting their bank balances and marketability for other franchise tournaments around the world, having their cake and eating it if the terms are right (no workload gripes then).

The architects of The Hundred - two of them at Yorkshire in the form of acting chief executive Sanjay Patel and chair Colin Graves - would argue that The Hundred is essential to the financial health of the game and to protect the very cricket their members care about. The clash between commercialism and romanticism, the new ways and the old, is a reflection on the evolution of society as much as that of cricket.

It is easy, of course, to shoot from the sidelines – particularly if one is not in charge of the purse strings. However, one cannot but feel that it is the Championship and the members that will inevitably suffer unless there is an acceptance that there is no wriggle room left.

Although right to highlight the problems, the PCA is also voicing concerns that would have been laughable to the cricketers of not that long ago.

Consider this… next year, Yorkshire play 14 Championship, 14 T20 Blast and eight One-Day Cup games (a maximum of 78 days’ cricket, rising to a possible 84 if the club reaches both one-day finals, over a timespan of 176 days from April 4 to September 27 inclusive).

Sixty years ago next summer, by way of contrast, the schedule for Yorkshire in 1965 showed 28 three-day Championship matches, five one-dayers and five other three-day first-class games, which amounted to a maximum of 104 days’ cricket over a timespan of 139 days from April 28 to September 14 inclusive.

In other words, Yorkshire’s class of 1965 had 26 more days’ scheduled cricket and 37 fewer days to play it in; there were no three-hour T20 matches then, either, or the current motorway network. And yet those lads managed it.

That year, a 34-year-old Fred Trueman bowled 754.4 overs in first-class cricket - a very light season by his standards; in 2024, no Yorkshire bowler sent down half that number.

In 1965, Yorkshire routinely played first-class fixtures back-to-back, never mind T20s, even if there was sometimes a rest day during a game. Two of those matches sent them from Swansea to Sheffield, and from Taunton to Hull.

But there was a key difference back then.

In the 1960s, there was no endless gym work, training days/sessions, warm-ups, and so on. The backroom staff was pretty much the scorer.

Players effectively rocked up for one match and moved on to the next. Their workload was different – and it involved more cricket.

Nothing better highlights the changing priorities.