CMJ said something startling the other day. “With due respect to the ICC,” he wrote, “no one in England really cares much about the Champions Trophy.” By the fair-minded standards of The Times cricket correspondent, this was a sweeping statement. But it was absolutely true. Most fans don’t give two hoots about the Champions Trophy, which takes place next month in India. It’s misnamed (it must be — England’s one-day team are included), it’s misconceived (too frequent, too money-driven) and it’s mistimed (too close to the World Cup).

For England’s regulars, it is just what the doctor didn’t order. They need a rest, not a month of sitting in airports and adjusting to low, slow surfaces of a kind never yet found in Australia.

CMJ’s point raises a wider question: what happens to sport when the fans don’t care? The answer is that most of the air goes out of the balloon. The definition of a fan is someone who cares — who is desperate to know the score, get a ticket or find a telly. When ardour gives way to indifference, something significant is lost.

Cricket is particularly prone to it because administrators are always tempted to schedule more games, while fans have less time and more choices. This year there are four county competitions and two have We Don’t Care written all over them: the Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy and the NatWest Pro40 League. One came too early in the season, the other too late.

They committed the cardinal sin of confusing the public — one was played over 50 overs, the other over 40, both were new and yet not new, each had two divisions but one was regional and the other done on merit. The upshot is that there are keen cricket lovers who couldn’t tell you where their team are in the Pro40 table.

The other two competitions are thriving. Supporters have always cared about the county championship and they have rapidly taken the Twenty20 Cup to their hearts. The championship is still the big one, so much so that if their team won it while being hopeless at everything else, most fans would be happy.

But the same is almost true of Twenty20, because it’s fun, it’s skilful and demanding and, in a revolutionary break with cricketing tradition, it fits into the lives of people with jobs or schools to go to. When fans do care, it doesn’t necessarily help.

We cared desperately about each Ashes series from 1989 to 2002-03 and England lost the lot. But when we don’t care, the game loses its edge. Cricket is a highly ambient sport. It’s often quiet and some of the key players — the fast bowlers, mainly — are on the boundary, closer to the crowd than to their team-mates. The fans’ mood transmits itself to the players.

Much has been said this summer about how we, as a nation, don’t care enough about one-day cricket. There’s some truth in this. We care more about Test cricket, and rightly so — it is a bigger canvas, with more possibilities. But it’s not more difficult: as Angus Fraser once said, and Duncan Fletcher argued this week, bowling can be easier in Tests, with more time, less pressure and more latitude on wides.

Fifty-over cricket is a very good game when handled right by the administrators. It must have a sense of occasion. The C & G and Pro40, already under scrutiny, need to merge into one competition that gives every county five or six matches that really matter.

Sir Alec Bedser said this week that he couldn’t understand how players could improve by playing less. With due respect to a great bowler, England’s Test team are living proof of it: since they have had central contracts, they have shot up to second-best in the world. Less really has been more.

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