Cricket is not just a game for Indians, it's an emotion. And the cricketers are no ordinary people in the country. They are always treated as celebrities. Therefore, the emotions which are attached to Men in Blue are affected by the performance the team shows. The team members have at times received infinitely higher amount of love from the fans on the occasions where teams have won laurels for the country, and the same players have see the worst side of the fans when the team performs poorly. The fans are the foundation of the game, and therefore the team's performance heavily reflects in the behaviour of the fans, who deeply love the gentlemen's game.

A result of which, there is immense following for the game and the stars involved around it. People take interest even in the smallest decisions taken on the field by the players , and off the field in their lives. The love and it's warmth from the fans increases with increasing number of matches. However, just like anything, everything in this world has to be done in limits. Too much love causes infatuation, and the same can be said when too much cricket happens around. The current state of the Indian team is such that the excessive number of matches played by Men in Blue are creating issues for the team, as well as fans.

The increase of cricketing days has severely affected most of the things which revolve around it in a very bad way. It's firstly resulted in the casual approach of the players. It's a natural thing to take few matches lightly when you have lot more coming up your way. The casual approach was witnessed by the fans in the recently concluded Indian tour of West Indies, which turned out to be an eye opener and a disaster for the team. Disappointment continued for the fans who saw a captain with irresponsible behaviour, and too many experimentations which were way beyond the logic of anyone who even knows slightest about the game.

The result of all this was India losing a series to a side which failed to qualify for the world cup. The WTC final already had infuriated the fans. And the series against West Indies did the job of adding fire to the fuel. The first loss in the ODI series was responsible for many people not preferring to watch the series. And the T20 series did the rest. Many of the genuine cricket fans preferred to not watch the match live, as the interest and excitement of watching their team play is just vanishing with the time. And all of it, the decline in viewership, as well as changed attitude of the cricketers are a result of extremely poor scheduling of matches.

The recently announced schedule of the Indian team even strengthens the fact. From this date to 11th March 2024, Men in Blue are going to play a minimum of 38 matches, which include 7 tests. Assuming that on an average a test lasts for 3 days, the days when team would play are still going beyond 50. And the stipulated schedule does not include the Asian games in China, world cup warm-up matches, knockouts of Asia Cup and the world cup. If all of these are taken into account, the total number of days when the team is playing would go beyond 60. Considering the schedule from today to March 11 is approximately 200 days, 60 playing days out of these mean that on every 3rd day the Indian team is going to play a match till 11th March, which will be followed by the IPL.

The above mentioned statistics are valid only for the senior Men in Blue. If we further go on to see the fixtures for Senior Women in Blue, U-19 men and women tours, U- 23 Men and women tours and India A tours combined with the senior Men in Blue schedule, it gives a match on every alternate day. This much amount of cricket is enough for a die hard cricket fan to take a break from watching cricket for some amount of time, if not for long. It also means that the players will be in a continuous process of playing the game, eventually affecting their bodies as well as performance. The result of which would be more injuries, casual approach and poor performance from the team, and a significant reduction in the viewers of the game.

As rightly pointed out by cricketer turned actress Saiyami Kher, there used to be immense excitement for the fans for any series coming up next. In contrast to that, today when matches happen on almost every alternate day, the excitement has dropped down multi fold. Fans used to rejoice series lasting long up to 2-3 months, because it came after some time intervals, unlike today when it's become a common phenomena like everything else in life has. Also, the constant scheduling of games is heavily affecting the quality of cricket played by the team, who now seem to play for the sake of playing it, quite opposite to what happened around a decade back.

And if the same continues to happen, it will result in a significant decline in the viewership. It will force the viewers to switch to some other sport in future. The only thing which will remain in the Indian cricket circuit will be money, which will also eventually decline as fans will start to turn their back towards the game they love. The decline of West Indies was not a great sign to watch for world cricket. Similarly decline of Indian cricket would be something no one wants to witness. The former happened because of lack of money, while the later might happen due to abundance of it. And to change the decline of the sport in the powerhouse of world cricket, the board has to take firm decisions about reducing the matches per year. Because if they don't, too much cricket would kill the interest of the fans sooner or later. What are your views thoughts on this?