Tim May 'staggered' at Mali comments

Tim May, the chief executive of FICA, the international players' association, told Cricinfo that he was "staggered" at the comments made by Ray Mali, the newly-appointed ICC president, regarding player burnout.

Mali said on Saturday that the ICC had not been contacted regarding the international schedule. "If the players feel that the fixtures are too tight, their representatives can talk to us," he said. "We have not received any official complaint so far."

May, however, reacted with incredulity at Mali's stance on the situation. "I totally understand that Ray has only just commenced his position as president of the ICC, and may not have been brought up to speed with all current issues," he said. "However, the issue of the volume and concentration of cricket has been the number one issue between ICC and FICA for a number of years.

"The positions of FICA have been well documented and communicated to ICC for a significant period now. It concerns me that the president of the ICC, an executive member of the ICC for a number of years, is unaware of player and player representatives' concerns in this matters.

"A recent poll of players showed that the majority of players lacked confidence in the ICC's ability to govern the game. I am not sure that comments such as Ray's assists us in turning this confidence around.

"It's obviously disappointing that the players' representative's opinion has not filtered through to the ICC executive board, despite being formally communicated to the management of the ICC and directly into the chief executives' committee, let alone the significant amount of public comment on the above matter.

"The fact of the matter is that players' representatives have not agreed the fixtures, do not support the ICC guidelines for fixturing and have regularly communicated their concern to the ICC.

"Ray is very new to the job and I hope that in the near future he is fully briefed on the current cricket issues," May concluded. "We look forward to working with Ray, we wish him well with his new position and I will be more than happy to deliver our concerns regarding player workload to Ray face to face."