Have the Commonwealth Games passed their sell-by date? The Indian Government are deeply unhappy at the latest withdrawals from this year’s event in New Delhi, and understandably so.

The cast of star competitors is beginning to look like a litany of absentees, with England’s track queen Victoria Pendleton the latest among the escalating array of deserters.

She joins Scottish pedalling pal Sir Chris Hoy and assorted members of sports glitterati including athltetics’ principal boy Usain Bolt, England’s leading lady Jessica Ennis and Jamaicans Shelly-Ann Fraser (announced before her positive drugs test) and Veronica Campbell-Brown, plus Beth Tweddle, Daniel Keating and Louis Smith among England’s leading gymnasts  in declaring that the Commonwealth Games are not in their 2010 diary. As insidethegames reported earlier this week, India’s Sports Minister is angry at the raft of personalities whose names look like making Delhi a star-free zone.

"This is not good at all," says M S Gill. "Star athletes have drifted away from the Games….they do not seem to think they are important any more."

Sadly, his words have the ring of truth. As the years pass, these Games cease to have sufficient status to remain a major attraction for sport’s A-listers.

It used to the fear of Delhi belly that caused many sports folk to shudder at the prospect of a visit to the sub-Continent. Now it is overcrowded schedules, nail-nibbling concerns over security and the lack of relevance of the India’s Games to the commercial market that causes such a reluctance to travel there. 

The Commonwealth Games have become devalued, just as the Commonwealth title has in boxing and a number of other sports. I do not say this lightly, having attended every Games since 1966 and enjoyed all of them. They are not labelled the Friendly Games for nothing. By and large they have been a joy to witness and report.

They may not have the cachet of the Olympics, nor would you expect them to have as by comparison they are a village fete. This is not to disparage them but to appreciate them for what they are - or rather, were.

The ‘Friendly Games’ now exist uneasily in a target-obsessed era when friendlies in sport have become meaningless. There is now serious rivalry from the African Games, Asian Games, the Mediterranean Games, the Youth Olympics and an increasing number of individual sport world and European Championships which seem to coincide and brings fixture congestion in the same year, and take priority as far as competitors are concerned.

A Commonwealth Games medal is a decent little trinket to hang around the neck but it does not possess the market value of an Olympic or World Championships one. That seems a prime reason why so many of sport’s superstars can’t be bothered to turn up.

The problem with the Commonwealth Games is that, rather like the Commonwealth itself, they have become something of an anachronism. Hard as they have tried, that still cannot shake off the remaining vestiges of colonialism lingering from the days from inception in 1930 they first were the British Empire Games,  then the British Empire and Commonwealth Games (1954), the British Commonwealth Games (1970) and finally the Commonwealth Games in 1978.

Subsequently there have been some strong arguments as to whether or not we actually need a Commonwealth any more, and  if this should be was to be the case why need a Commonwealth Games?

Personally I hope they continue for some years to come. I would be sad to see them redundant but I fear they are becoming so in terms of all co-existing with the escalating major porting competitions now going on around the world.

Sport’s international calendar is incredibly congested. One can  appreciate why Scotland’s Chris Hoy (pictured), for instance, has rejected Delhi in favour of preparing to his own satisfaction for both the upcoming European Championships and the Olympics (though whether he would have risked getting seriously clubbed about the head by a million claymores had this October’s ComGames been in Glasgow instead of Delhi is open to conjecture).

"The Olympics has to take precedence over everything," says Hoy, a double Commonwealth Games gold medalist. "I could turn up at the Commonwealth Games but it would hamper my preparation for the European Championships, a qualifying event for 2012. And I wouldn't be at a hundred per cent fitness-wise."

Pendleton says the same and you can bet there will be numerous more drop outs within the nest couple of months to cause Mr Gill more angst.

Fair enough I suppose. But with Delhi’s Games fast becoming the great Indian take-away inn terms of talent, you wonder how many Asian nations may take reprisals at Glasgow in 2014.

I suspect that, in any case, the way international sport will burgeon over the next four years the dear old Commonwealth Games will become even less magnet for the superstars. Perhaps it is time to start revamping with a new format, perhaps even a new title for the quadrennial sportsfest. Time, perhaps scale them down in these harsh dark economic times and give the shop window to some of those disciplines which never get a look-in at the Olympics: Things like water skii-ing, darts, snooker and acrobatic gymnastics (all of which would bring even more glory to our Home Nations).

They also have  which have a greater televisual appeal than some already in the traditional Games schedule. Time, perhaps, to celebrate a common wealth of games rather than a Commonwealth Games.  

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics and 10 Commonealth Games.