It's an old saw, this one, but after the performances of England in Zimbabwe and the bad smell which has hung about the team like the fug over a factory, some are saying that the pro-shutdown lobby has a more persuasive case right now than ever before.

Break-proposers argue that a properly instituted, batteryrecharging winter furlough would have the immediately beneficial effect of preventing a build-up of fixtures and would directly free England from the strain of facing, sometimes as often as twice in a week, some of the world's weakest cricketing nations.

Also, they maintain, if there was no touring side, there would be no ambassadorial mending to do after the touring side's departure. (The England cricket squad and their management have now all but replaced travelling football fans as a force for antidiplomacy, and they carry their effect to much further reaches of the globe, too.)

The slump-shouldered gracelessness of Michael Atherton in defeat and, on Sky Sports, the sound of Ian Botham trying to juggle the dual roles of commentator and member of The Management without getting his fingers trapped - both of these things and more, it is argued, would be eliminated at a stroke by installing a regular winter break, beginning in September and lasting for perhaps nine or 10 months. Radical. But something to ponder there, cer- tainly.

Apparently voices are sometimes heard claiming football should close down for the winter as well. But here, of course, it's impossible to make the argument stick. The proposed evil is ``fixture congestion''. But rather like global warming, fixture congestion gets a bad press quite at odds with the pleasure people take in its effects.

If fixture congestion means three home games in eight days - as it has this week for Chelsea fans and Arsenal followers - then let us have more fixture congestion.