luckyeddie said:
It never used to be the case. Geoff Boycott was once asked the same thing. His answer? "Too much bottled milk".
The point he was making is that it's a more sedentary lifestyle nowadays than in the old "walked 15 miles and worked 12 hours down t' pit" days, too many burgers and pathetic footwear.
Those great clodhoppers cricketers used to wear weren't just to save on rolling the pitch.
The fact of injuries is one that baffles the new and causes the old to go into transports of regret.
With technological advances and improvement in understanding of human biology, there should in theory be far less injuries than there were in the more reticent days. Especially when you consider that far
less cricket is now played than it was in the 1950s and 1960s especially.
Poor footwear, laziness, overcooked and ill-planned training, terribly planned tours (far too many b2b Tests and not enough rest and acclimatisation) due to overdone international cricket, are all factors that seem logical to blame.
ICC's decision to use a ten-year plan was a poor one for me; a 12 or even 14-year plan would have been much better. Too much one-day-cricket is played by general consensus everywhere except in the offices of Cricket Boards (and quite frankly while subcontinental countries and Zimbabwe play too much, England and possibly West Indies still don't play enough).
Lots of cricket is great for spectators in the short-term and good for players' pockets, but damaging for long-term enjoyment of both.
While I don't agree with the notion that eminent former cricketers should run cricket, I do think bosses should be more sensitive.