The greatest modern malaise is the lack of time. Everything these days has to be fast: fast food, fast lives, fast cricket, fast forgotten. And if India fast slide to defeat in the West Indies, one would do well to blame not just the team, but also the pace. Not the pace of the West Indies bowlers, but the pace at which cricket is played these days. India's biggest enemy will be the itinerary. They play a three-day match against Guyana's second XI – the first XI is away playing the Busta Cup finals – and go straight into the first Test, and then the second, and then another three-day game, and then three Tests in a row, and then five one-dayers in a row.

Besides the dubious quality of the opposition – surely a West Indies A team would have given West Indies a chance to check out their probables as well – India will be adversely affected by getting just one tour game before the Tests begin. Tour games are ideally a chance to give the certainties a feel of the conditions, and to assess the form of the borderline players. India cannot do both here, and will thus go into the first Test not sure if they're playing the best possible XI.

This is particularly relevent with reference to the openers. SS Das is sure of a place, but there are three contenders for the other slot. Deep Dasgupta, for the first time, will be contending for a place in the side without the wicketkeeping gloves on. He has looked the part so far, but will John Wright and Sourav Ganguly have faith in him as a specialist opener? They might be inclined to go in for Wasim Jaffer, a classy opener who was in prolific form all through March, scoring a hundred in each innings of a Duleep Trophy match. Or there's Sanjay Bangar, a centurion two Tests ago, but not quite sure of a place in the middle order; he opens in domestic cricket, and is a useful bowler as well.

India could also find itself in a spot over their fast bowlers. When India went to South Africa last year, all the five pacers in the squad played a Test (or the unofficial Test). However promising they appear in India, poor form or injury normally sees a high turnover rate during overseas tours. While the first-choice pacers will probably get to play in the warm-up game, the others might, later, find themselves pitchforked into the Test side without any match-practice at all. Think back to South Africa, when Ashish Nehra and Zaheer Khan went into the first Test completely match-unfit, and got duly hammered. If Nehra is called upon to do duty here, it would be his first international outing since then.

By the time India begin figuring out their best combination, the series could already have been decided. As scheduled. The solution to this is obvious; more tour games at the beginning of the tour, so that the players can find their feet on foreign soil, and less one-dayers - even one less Test match. It's not that itineraries like this one are something peculiar to India or the West Indies; every cricketing country plays under similar schedules. A total of 403 days of international cricket were scheduled in 2001; a clutter of cricket, most of it unmemorable, that serves no-one; not spectators, not players, and certainly not the game itself.

Amit Varma is assistant editor of Wisden.com India.

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