Decision to stage ten Ashes Tests next year has cheapened the last sacred thing in cricket These wise words were uttered last week by Jonathan Trott when looking ahead to this Australian overkill. They should have been at the forefront of the minds of English and Australian administrators before they saturated the Future Tours Program with ten Ashes Tests in a row next year. Why are we letting them get away with this? The official reason contains a morsel of truth, which has then been inflated to justify the whole exercise. The World Cup has to be decoupled from Ashes winters in Australia. England did not give themselves anything like their best chance in the World Cups of 2003, 2007 and 2011 because they followed hard on draining Test and one-day series in Australia. But there is no excuse whatsoever for packing in an extra Ashes series here in 2015, instead of waiting for 2017 in accordance with the four-year home-and-away cycle that has been sanctified by tradition for one damn good reason. A hundred years ago or now, however tastes and attention-spans may change, a four-year cycle is best. So while decoupling Ashes winters from World Cups is part of the truth, a much larger element of it is that English and Australian administrators wanted to pack another Ashes series into the Future Tours Program and increase the money they can get from their broadcasting deals. Well, let's see if this short-term expediency pays in the end. Players and spectators have got bored with briefer back-to-back series against New Zealand in 2008 and West Indies in 2009, never mind ten consecutive Tests against the same opponents. The piece of paper on the side of the Ashes urn has a verse that was composed after the Hon Ivo Bligh led a team to Australia in 1882-3: When Ivo goes back with the urn, the urn; Studs, Steel, Read and Tylecote return, return; The welkin will ring loud, The great crowd will feel proud, Seeing Barlow and Bates with the urn, the urn; And the rest coming home with the urn. Somewhere in the marketing department of the England and Wales Cricket Board or Cricket Australia, somebody in a suit has decided to rewrite the history of the longest and finest rivalry in cricket, or indeed sport: We are going to monetise the urn, the urn And increase our capital return, return. Cash-tills will ring loud And accountants feel proud As we now cash in on the urn, the urn, And exploit without shame the urn. Proof of the pud? The next World Cup will indeed be decoupled from the Ashes in 2015. But the World Cup after that will be staged in England in 2019 - in the very same summer as another Ashes series.