WHEN the Lions run out to start their tour today, it will be their first appearance since the summer of 2005. No matches since, no television coverage. They have scarcity value, this is one reason why they are still exciting. They haven't been in South Africa since 1997, and they won't be there again till 2021. Given that their tours come at four-year intervals, and that nowadays they play only three Tests on each tour, this means they take 12 years to play all of nine Tests.
The countries from whom the Lions squad is drawn will now play as many Tests, perhaps even one more, in a single calendar year.
There should be a lesson here. There is a lesson here. But it's not likely to be learned by the people in charge of rug
by - or indeed of other sports. Yet it is simple and obvious. If there was a Lions tour every summer, it would arouse far less interest. Familiarity breeds indifference. Here in Scotland we can no longer fill Murrayfield for autumn internationals, even against New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. Moreover, thanks to the extensive TV coverage we now enjoy - and it would be hypocritical to pretend it isn't enjoyable - the arrival on these shores of any of the Big Three from the southern hemisphere is no longer the event it used to be. The stars of the All Blacks, Springboks and Wallabies are almost as well-known to us as the stars of our rivals in the Six Nations.
In cricket an Ashes series remains an exciting prospect, partly because suggestions that the gap between series be shortened has been resisted. But otherwise there are far too many Test matches, even if schedules are not always as ridiculous as this summer's which saw the West Indies, seemingly reluctant tourists in the first place, condemned to play the Lord's Test in the first week of May and then dispatched north to Durham for the second. No wonder crowds were poor, and not only because the few spectators who braved the weather were shivering in padded jackets, scarves and woolly hats.
But even the arrival of the Australians is less exciting than it was in the distant days when they disembarked from a liner at Tilbury or Southampton, their players either unknown quantities or famous figures whom none of us had seen in action since the last Ashes series in England four or five years previously. Take for instance young Phillip Hughes, the latest in the long line of batsmen hailed as "the new Bradman". Certainly one looks forward eagerly to seeing him in action, testing his unorthodox technique in English conditions. But Sky Sports has already allowed us to see him lambasting the South African attack this past winter, while Middlesex had him over playing a few matches, with great success, before his team-mates arrived here. So the curiosity he arouses is less than it would have been in the past.
Meanwhile, the cricket authorities appear incapable of learning from experience. A couple of years ago someone came up with the idea of 20/20 as a light-hearted means of attracting a new public to the game. Traditionalists like myself don't care for it, may even despise it and regard it as a perversion. It's a caper, "kids' cricket" I call it. Nevertheless we can't deny its popular appeal.
So what happens? There is more and more of it, and still more 20/20 tournaments are planned. It already looks like overkill. You would think the authorities had never heard of the Law of Diminishing Returns. Yet experience should have taught them that this law always operates. One-Day Internationals were once as popular as 20/20 is today. They were also, originally, much closer to "real cricket". The players dressed in whites and matches were 60 overs a side, giving batsmen lots of time to build an innings. More and more ODIs were staged, and the more there were, the less significant they became. Some matches will be entertaining, certainly - but who remembers a one-day series two or three months later? It's not surprising if we don't. After all, there's probably another ODI series already being played.
The same thing will happen with Twenty20. In as much as it is a good thing (and in one way it obviously is, however it may fail to appeal to the traditionalists) there is already too much of it - and yet they plan more. Andy Caddick, the Somerset and England bowler, delivered a warning the other day; the public, he said, will soon get tired. This summer almost the whole of June is being given over to this kids' cricket.. it's ridiculous. It won't be long before Twenty20 itself has to be livened up. So what next? International tip and run?
In contrast, we can enjoy the Lions' Tests because we know we won't see any more of them till 2013, and the Ashes because the Aussies won't be back here defending, or trying to regain the trophy, for four summers. If Wimbledon was played every month from May to September, we would care less about it.
