NOT all's bad that ends badly. The Oval Test match, notorious for finishing in a forfeit, was a step forward for cricket in one way. It was, I believe, the first Test in this country to make decent efforts at recycling. Instead of the usual all-purpose binbag, heading straight for landfill, there were 75 recycling points around the ground for punters to lob their plastic glasses, paper cups, cardboard beer-trays and 4-and-6 placards into green bins. The initiative was fronted by Alec Stewart, who said: “The amount of waste created at a Test match is astonishing.” He should know: as well as England’s most capped cricketer, he was possibly its tidiest.

This was revolutionary stuff. You might think cricket was quite a green sport. It is to look at, but its environmental habits are awful.

The life of an international player is not so much a merry-go-round as one long wait at an airport carousel. Twenty years ago there were six teams playing each other relatively rarely, with the emphasis on long series. Now there are nine or ten (depending on Zimbabwe’s predicament) meeting each other all the time, with the emphasis on two-Test series, one-day triangulars and meaningless gatherings of the entire clan.

This winter, England will go to India for the Champions Trophy and West Indies for the World Cup, somehow fitting in an Ashes tour on which they will criss-cross Australia like mad things. There will be twice as many people in each touring party as there once were. And players now dip in and out of tours, nipping home to see a specialist or meet their new baby.

Ten years ago, when I was editing Wisden Cricket Monthly, we decided to work out which players were doing the most globe-trotting. After a heroic piece of research by the deputy editor, Steven Lynch, we named the first winner — Australia's Ian Healy, who had done, from memory, about 70,000 miles. Within a few years, the winner (by then Stephen Fleming, of New Zealand) was doing 100,000 miles.

International cricket’s total emissions, for a relatively small sport, must be colossal.

The county circuit isn’t much better. As soon as a young player makes his first fifty, he is handed the keys to a sponsored car. The county programme of the 1980s and 90s was one giant benefit match for the motor trade, with teams often breaking off in the middle of a championship match to play a 40-over match somewhere else.

These days, the programme shows some signs of sanity, but there are still too many competitions (the C&G has been reduced to a non-event, and the Pro40 is predictably failing to catch the imagination), the sponsored car still rules, and the players think anyone who travels by train is highly amusing. The grounds look great, but how many chemicals are being poured into them? The ECB even allows groundsmen to bind their one-day pitches with glue. Somehow you suspect the glue isn’t 100 per cent biodegradable.

The best players not only rack up huge mileage themselves, they use their fame to get the rest of us to join them. Andrew Flintoff is a brand ambassador for the Volkswagen Touareg 4x4, which even by 4x4 standards is big, expensive and, in the words of What Car, heavy on fuel and emissions.

Open an Indian magazine and the chances are you will see Sachin Tendulkar sharing a little of his personal cachet with a motorbike. And administrators in the subcontinent still think it’s OK to give the man of the match a bike or even a car. Not even the umpires are immune. Fly Emirates, say their shirts, which is demeaning to them and damaging to the planet.

The ICC can muster a little altruism if something dramatic happens, like the tsunami, but not for climate change. Its headquarters are now in Dubai, world centre of mindless consumerism, so its officers can’t even go to a cricket match without getting on a plane. Poor Malcolm Speed has to cross continents just to hang a man out to dry. His behaviour sums up cricket’s attitude to the environment. It’s rubbish.