Adam Parore: Today's bowlers aren't soft, they're worn out

The spate of back injuries which have again sidelined our top bowlers is an ongoing concern.

Let's face it, the human body was not designed to do the amount of bowling now expected from these guys.

Today's players are no softer than their predecessors. The difference is the amount of cricket being played.

They play six times as much cricket these days as the "tough guys" from the past did.

There is no simple solution to the injuries issue other than to play less cricket.

There are only so many balls in you. When you have bowled your quota, your time is up.

It enforces my long-held view that the only reason you become a bowler is because you can't bat. Why else would you want to put yourself through such demands?

I wasn't much good at bowling either, so I got stuck keeping wicket.

I can remember many times in the dressing room seeing the batters pull out their bats, while on the other side, the bowlers would drag out their big brown envelopes and compare x-rays and scans.

Stress fractures aren't like a broken bone in your arm, hand or foot. I saw an x-ray of Dion Nash's back. His stress fracture looked like a broken biscuit.

What we have learned from stress fractures is that they never really heal.

After being diagnosed, you might get a couple more seasons - if you are lucky. No one has come back from two stress fractures.

Again, it comes back to the amount of pressure your body is being put under. The expectation has to be that cricketers will follow rugby players in having much shorter playing careers.

Whereas leading players from both codes in the past could expect up to 10 years at the top, that is more likely to be five or six years now. In that time these players will play as much as those who played in what people still like to call the "good old days".

You will see the top bowlers bowling less simply because they can't - or won't - change their bowling action until it's too late. It seems strange that week after week, cricket fans seem to be talking about two issues - bad backs and bad cricket wickets.

Bowlers and their backs are struggling to handle the amount of bowling they are expected to do. It is nothing new.

In my days with the New Zealand team, the problem was ongoing, with Simon Doull, Geoff Allott and Nash - pretty much all the fast bowlers at the time - struggling.

Like back injuries, pitch preparation, too, comes under constant scrutiny. If preparing a good cricket wicket is a science, it seems to me it is pretty much hit and miss.

I thought the Hamilton pitch was a poor surface. By definition, any wicket on which you can't score 250 in a one-day international is a bad wicket.

But you can still have a great game of cricket on a poor wicket - I've played in plenty. Unfortunately the nature of the wicket at Hamilton meant that any sort of contest was out of the question.

The bounce in Wednesday's match was variable. From a distance, it looked like one of those crusty offerings from the past where the ball went through the top, hit the hard stuff underneath and bounced like a tennis ball.

For that reason, it ruined what should have been a good game.

More disconcertingly, it raised questions about what can be done to fix the problem, other than removing the soil and clay and starting again.

In the first match played on the new block in December, Auckland scored 418 in their first innings of a four-day State Championship match. There was no hint then of any problems.

It might just be a case of bad luck. It is not the first time where one wicket on the block has been a disaster but other strips have proved to be quite satisfactory.

But it does seem strange there have been such variations when the whole block has been relaid.

Like the back injuries, there might not be any easy answers but cricket fans and officials must be hoping solutions to both problems will be found - and quickly.