Gareth Batty: Player burnout can be a real worry as summer schedule starts to bite

With the schedule we have, I can tell you that it’s virtually impossible to feel at your best for a whole summer. It’s slightly more manageable for batsmen and for spin bowlers like me but for quick bowlers, it’s incredibly difficult.

There is a fine line between playing a lot of cricket and player burnout. We’re also hamstrung by the size of the squads in today’s game.

When I started playing, it was quite common to have a group of 24 players, all of whom were capable of playing well in the first team. But it’s not the same now, because of the salary cap and other matters, so there are far fewer senior players and it increases the strain on everyone. You look at the schedule this year and the way the Twenty20 competition has been revamped, and you will notice that involves far more travelling for most teams because there are only two first-round groups, rather than three.

Last year, the furthest we had to travel for a first-round game was to play Hampshire at Southampton, a 168-mile round trip from The Kia Oval. This year, we had to go to Somerset, Gloucestershire and Glamorgan, all of which are far longer journeys. It might not sound significant but when you’re playing cricket as regularly as we do, that kind of thing can take its toll.

Take a look at the Championship, too. Our 13th game of the season, against Kent, started on July 20, so we’ve completed all but three of our Division Two fixtures for the summer. Our last four-day fixture starts on September 15, so you can see that a huge amount of four-day cricket has been packed into the first half of the summer.

Then, there is the debate that won’t go away, about the lack of young spinners good enough to play for England. Traditionally spin bowlers come into their own later in the summer, when pitches are drier, dustier and harder. If most of the four-day cricket is out of the way before we even get to August, how are they going to learn their trade?