Karl on ... how much cricket do we play?

I've just posted a piece on how I'm convinced we're playing less test cricket than ever. Well, I've done a quick crunching of the numbers and the results are interesting.

We're not playing less test cricket than, say, 10 years ago. But overall we do seem to be playing less cricket. In terms of days of cricket played, 2005 and 2006 have been real lowlights, with 54 days of cricket in each year. 2007 is showing to be a bit of an anomaly but that's largely because of the tedious World Cup. Between now and the end of the year, if we're lucky New Zealand will play five tests. That will be the lowest since 1991.

Year	Tests	ODIs
1995	10	19
1996	6	22
1997	10	17
1998	6	23
1999	13	26
2000	9	25
2001	8	23
2002	8	31
2003	6	29
2004	10	25
2005	7	19
2006	8	14
2007	0	24