Disclaimer- Distances mentioned in this article have been taken using the “as the crow flies” or straight-line method, and do not take into account connecting flights or stopovers that a team has to take in order to reach their destination. Taking that into account would no doubt have considerably increased the distances covered by the teams.

The figures in themselves are enormous. A total of 259 Tests, ODIs and T20Is will have been played by representatives of 16 Teams in 2010. For the Completion of this schedule, Over 400 players will have travelled 908,574 kilometers, in 24 Countries across 6 Continents. However not all countries had an equal share in this grueling schedule.

As we can see Australia is the clear and comprehensive winner in this category notching up an incredible 123,732 kilometers in terms of distance travelled. A huge part of this is invariably due to the massive size of Australia itself, and also partly due to the fact that Australia will have played an incredible 54 Tests, ODIs and T20Is this year. Next up is New Zealand, which is due to the large distances from New Zealand to the rest of the cricket playing world. Pakistan, currently the team without a home, is unsurprisingly at No. 3. A surprise entrant at No. 5 is Afghanistan, another team without a home. Afghanistan’s 2 matches at the T20 World Cup plus its matches with other faraway associates helped them notch over 66,000 km despite playing relatively few matches. India played 49 international matches this year, but still has relatively travelled less due to playing a lot of its matches in the subcontinent, and particularly Sri Lanka. Down the table, South Africa is a surprise entrant, this is due to the fact that South Africa played only 3 away series and one of them was in the West Indies immediately following the World Cup. The bottom 5 did not play any tests this year, and 4 of these teams did not play in the T20 World Cup, with the distances covered by Kenya, Scotland and Netherlands combined being less than that of Ireland.

Not all players, of course, played in every match that their teams played in. However the most travelled player in 2010 has to be Michael Clarke, who had to fly back and forth from New Zealand to Australia in the middle of series due to personal problems. With 127,423 km, he flew over 3000 more kilometers than scheduled.

All these distances sound very intimidating, but how does it compare with other sports. Well, for starters, the most travelled sportsman in the world, South African golfer Gary Player, has  managed an incredible 24 million kilometers in air-travel over a 50-year career. So the next time a cricketer starts complaining about travel fatigue, he could take a cue from Gary Player’s numbers.