Just four days after losing a marathon five-setter in the US Open final, a jet-lagged Roger Federer, recovering from a trans-Atlantic flight, took to the court in Genoa to help Switzerland stave of relegation in the Davis Cup. Tomorrow, Australia will most likely complete a 7-0 ODI series victory over England and the winners will have no time to go on a bender since the two-week long Champions Trophy in South Africa is only a week away. In the last eight days, Fernando Torres has spent 270 minutes on the pitch for Liverpool.

Since no one is likely to spill tears over the schedules of a bunch of multimillionaires, at least think about the fans. Remember 2006, when ‘metatarsal’ became a buzzword as all England waited on Wayne Rooney’s right foot? Rooney eventually played in the World Cup but the spark that had lighted the 2004 European Championships and the English Premier League was missing. American fans have also been deprived of the talents of Rafa Nadal as his body is unable to keep up with the demands of the tour and there is a noticeable drop in the quality of his play August onwards. With knee and stomach injuries now plaguing him, Nadal often comes on court with so much taping he appears to be auditioning for an underground seat in Egypt.

All sports have an off-season, which is meant to be a time for players to recover from injuries and work on their games. But this period gets shorter every year, with the tennis season ending in December and restarting in early January. Footballers get a couple of months off in odd-numbered years, otherwise they have to play the World Cup and European Championships.

But sportsmen, while complaining about their workload during the season, undermine their case by further enriching themselves during their ostensible period of R&R. Federer and Nadal can hardly complain that they play too much (although they still do) when they spend December trawling after seven-figure appearance fees to play meaningless exhibition matches. And, Ricky Ponting and other Australian cricketers apart, every international cricketer chased the pot of silver dangled by the IPL. Footballers, although not by choice, spend their off-months promoting their brand in North America and Asia.

There have been various attempts to curtail sportsmen’s workloads. Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez tried rotating his squad, but had to abandon that when he realised that Steven Gerrad was the only word-class player in his squad (this was before Fernando Torres joined the team) and it would be suicidal to his title chances to rest him. Cricket might just be able to solve the problem as it ends the first decade of its Age of Specialisiation. If a cricketer is selected for all three forms of the game — and it will soon be rare to find more than a handful who are — he will have more time to recover from injuries. Plus, no cricketer has to tour Pakistan, so that’s one less series they’ll have to play. It is tennis, with its dogmatic insistence that, apart from the four Grand Slams, all players must play the nine Masters Series tournaments, that seems to have least regard for its beasts of burden.