Give us back our seasons

The Sri Lankans have started their tour of England and face the earliest start to a series in the country © Getty Images

Greetings from London, where it is cold and wet and hardly feels as if spring has arrived, let alone summer - and yet, next week, we have a Test series. England meet Sri Lanka at Lord's on May 11, the earliest start ever to a Test series in this country. Last year's Ashes ended on September 12, the latest finish ever to a Test series in this country. That day happened to be a fine one for cricket - Kevin Pietersen managed to see the ball quite well - but the day before, the Sunday, was intensely autumnal. The Australian batsmen had Flintoff and Hoggard looming at them out of a thick fog. It was The Hound of the Baskervilles at one end and Gorillas in the Mist at the other.

In England at this time of year, cricketers talk of three-sweater days. The Sri Lankans, used to sweltering humidity, may need six. Meanwhile, the calendar is being stretched around the world. South Africa's home Test series against New Zealand won't end until next Tuesday, deep into the southern-hemisphere autumn. Last year, South Africa's final home fixture came in mid-March; more often it is in January.

In the Caribbean, where cricket fans have only just got used to finding a Test series taking place in May and June, there is about to be one in June and July. The fourth Test between West Indies and India is due to finish on July 4. Any nervous fliers in the Indian squad may like to bear in mind that the hurricane season officially opens on June 1.

England's one-day series in India, which dragged on till April 15, was way too hot for comfort: for the poor perspiring Englishmen, to make 70 was to risk ending up in hospital. Both teams were palpably exhausted by the end - whereupon the Indian board whisked their players off to Abu Dhabi to meet the Pakistanis. India v Pakistan used to come along once in a career; now it's more like once every six months.

Australia have been having an even more gruelling time. They had a longer home season than normal because of the laughably named Super Series, then set off for South Africa, and washed up in Bangladesh, sleepwalking through their 17th Test in 10 months.

In Melbourne, it is famously said that you can experience four seasons in one day. On planet cricket, it is fast becoming a case of no seasons in one year. The international programme is routinely described as a treadmill, but we have now reached the point where this is unfair. Treadmill manufacturers may sue.

South Africa and New Zealand are playing as winter approaches © Getty Images

There used to be clear gaps in the calendar at either end of the southern winter - September-October and March-April. (The West Indians had to play in the March-April slot, but got November and December off in return). But show a modern cricket administrator a gap in the calendar and he will spot an opportunity for selling some TV rights.

September-October has been colonised by the Champions Trophy, and next year it will get the first Twenty20 World Championship (the right idea at the wrong time: it should have replaced the Champions Trophy, not joined it). March-April has been invaded by international series in India and Sri Lanka, where it is too hot, and New Zealand and South Africa, where it is getting chilly.

Seasons are elemental, vital things. The close season - a phrase that sounds quaintly dated - is essential too. It is a gap between meals, allowing us to digest our food and work up an appetite again. The present programme is like a bad western diet, full of snacks, over-processed, and dangerously removed from nature. If strawberries are in the shops all year round, two things happen: people appreciate them less, and there is less to appreciate because the strawberries are grown faster, with more chemicals, and come out with less flavour and fewer nutrients. Two months of good strawberries are worth more than 12 months of indifferent ones.

With quotable protests in the past few weeks from Brett Lee and Adam Gilchrist, burn-out among the players has finally become a hot potato. But there is also an impact on the fans. An international series ought to be a mouthwatering prospect, yet most England supporters just groaned at the thought of the seven one-dayers in India, and once Australia had won the (impressively close) first Test in Bangladesh, the second became a benefit match for Jason Gillespie.

Cricket has a special relationship with its fans, exceptional in its depth. It demands heavy commitment, taking time and close attention (and that's just to understand Duckworth-Lewis). It rewards us with epic entertainment like the 2005 Ashes. There hasn't been an epic since, unless you count the amazing 50-over game in which South Africa and Australia made record scores. There won't be many epics ahead, as more and more little series are played, and it becomes rarer and rarer for teams to be able to pick, as England and Australia did last year, from two fully fit and well rested squads. The strawberries are getting weaker.