Lily-livered MP Debbie Abrahams decided she’d rather kiss babies than front up to Malinga at The Oval © Getty Images

MS Dhoni has had little to complain about of late. If he had eaten a fried breakfast every time he had received a trophy, an accolade or a blast of public adulation this year, he would now be the size of 18 Inzamams. However, he received a minor setback in the current Barbados Test, when a blooper in the TV umpiring box led to him being dismissed on the rogue evidence of the wrong ball.

As an Englishman, I cannot help but regret that this new strain of dismissal was not available to umpires during my nation’s dark days of Ashes humiliation in the 1990s and early 2000s. “That’s out, Hayden. Technically, you smashed that wide long hop for four, but I’m going to judge you on the evidence of the ball Warne bowled to Hussain yesterday afternoon. Out. Plumb in front. Hitting the middle of middle. On your way, sunshine. 0 for 1.”

The prancing stride of technological progress is supposed to be ridding the cricketing world of the vicissitudes of umpiring error, yet it frequently adds an entertaining element of random injustice to proceedings. Players are given out or not-out when technology suggests they were in fact respectively not-out and out, on the grounds that they were only marginally not-out and out, and therefore should remain out and not out. Players are given not-out despite technology suggesting they were definitely out, because someone in a suit somewhere doesn’t like one of the bits of technology used. Players are given out when they were clearly not-out, because one of their team-mates had earlier pretended he was not-out even though he must have known he was out. Catches are denied because the tip of an unusually curious blade of grass could theoretically have been protruding through a fielder’s fingers. And now Dhoni has been despatched back to the pavilion because someone put the wrong roll of cine film into the projector in the TV umpire’s private cinema (I admit I am not entire up to speed with what technology the ICC is using these days).

The spirit of randomness at large in the adjudication of cricket could and arguably should be extended further. The Confectionery Stall fervently believes that there should be scope within the game of cricket for a fielding team, once an innings, to decide summarily that an opposition batsman is out. This would add another fascinating level of tactical intrigue to the great game – do you save the AutomaticOut^TM to dismiss the opposition’s best player as soon as he walks to the wicket, or do you wait to see whether or not he is in form, in case you need to get rid of a lesser player who is proving more dangerous on the day? In a tight game, do you hold on to your AutomaticOut^TM as long as possible, saving it for when one or two wickets are left and just a few runs are needed to win, or do you play it early in an effort to turn the momentum of the match at a critical juncture? Does a captain merely use it to settle his own personal vendettas against opposition players – in a game meandering towards a draw, a fielding captain could wait until his nemesis is on 99 before calling the AutomaticOut^TM and depriving his loathed opponent of personal glory, whilst running around punching the air and shouting, “Got him, got him, yes, he’s gone.”

Throughout cricket history, some umpires appear to have unilaterally applied their own version of the AutomaticOut^TM, triggering innocent and baffled batsmen with a proud waggle of the finger and an internal giggle. For the sakes of consistency and fairness, the system must be formalised, and the AutomaticOut^TM is clearly the best way to do this.

Of course, the AutomaticOut^TM, whilst providing huge interest for spectators, players and pundits alike, would further undermine the authority of the umpire. Amidst the squibbling squabbling over the DRS, with both sides claiming to have emerged victorious and having clung on to their precious principle that some decisions should remain wrong, no matter what system is used.

Ultimately it seems inevitable that umpires as we know and intermittently love them are an endangered species. In time, they will be replaced either by omniscient robots or by grim-faced, shaven-headed, bicep-twitching, tattoo-headed nightclub bouncers employed to stop players scuffling through a mixture of intimidation and growling. Or, in an ideal world, by omniscient robot nightclub bouncers armed with flamethrowers and an overriding sense of justice.

Aside from the Dhoni controversy, the second Test has been another intriguing low-scoring game on another pitch whose jaunty behaviour might have been annoying if it was a noisy teenager on a crowded train carriage rather than a cricket pitch, but which makes for good and interesting cricket. Such surfaces may be an unintended and happy by-product of the pitifully low crowds that attend Test matches in most parts of the cricketing universe these days. Ground authorities no longer need to worry about losing gate money on non-existent days four and five if no one is coming through that gate on days one to three.

In fact, the evidence of this game suggests that, for the good of Test cricket, administrators should do absolutely everything in their considerable powers to dissuade spectators from attending Test cricket. Thus freed from the constraints of financial necessity, the groundsmen would be free to prepare pitches that produce the kind of Test cricket that spectators would happily pay to watch.

Meanwhile Alistair Cook’s England established themselves as odds-on favourites to win the 2015 and 2019 ICC World Cups by thrashing Sri Lanka in the Sanath Jayasuriya Testimonial match on Tuesday. If they can replicate the form they showed at the rain-splattered Oval – decisive and positive batting, followed by incisive bowling and sharp fielding, all leading to a thumping victory ‒ in every match of the tournament in Australia in just 45 months’ time, they will fly home with a sparkly new trophy.

New captain Cook set a blazing tempo, clattering away at a super-Sehwagian 160 runs per 100 balls at the start of the innings. Admittedly he blazed and clattered for only three balls, but he evidently inspired his troops. If he can maintain that scoring rate for the rest of his captaincy career, and, ideally, rectify the getting-out-third-ball problem that has bedevilled him throughout his current one-match tenure as ODI skipper, he will silence any press-box sceptics.

It might be a little presumptuous to draw too many conclusions from any one game – as England’s World Cup campaign proved on a match-by-match basis ‒ but it was a good beginning, particularly given that, in the Colombo quarter-final at the end of March, England had been unceremoniously heffalumped by Sri Lanka, after curiously deciding not to risk disturbing any rare birds that might have been nesting in the proximity of the boundary rope. They were aided by the fact that, unlike in the World Cup, key bowler Jimmy Anderson is no longer running in to bowl as if he has just finished a 36-hour-shift as a junior doctor in a busy hospital’s accident and emergency department.

Sri Lanka were perhaps encumbered by the fact that, whilst they showed their support for the ICC’s democratisation drive by selecting a member of parliament to open their batting, England, by unsporting contrast, did not send Cook in alongside Debbie Abrahams, the Labour MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth.

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Umpire Chester demonstrates the victory jig he would have performed every time one of his reviewed decisions was upheld © Getty Images

England and Sri Lanka will do cricketing battle with (a) each other and (b) another unpromising weather forecast in the final Test at Southampton today. It is the Rose Bowl’s first Test match. As the old joke goes, new Test grounds in England are like London buses – you wait 100 years for one to turn up, and then three come along in under a decade.

Thus far, excluding the final-afternoon mayhem in Cardiff, when England’s bowlers obliterated their opponents like a hungry rhinoceros turning up at a somnolent picnic just as granny was packing away the remnants of a half-eaten pavlova, it has been a middling series. England’s imposing batting has only briefly been inconvenienced by Sri Lanka’s rather blunt and inexperienced bowlers, and there has been a degree of tactical caution by both sides that has further bunged up the already-rain-stifled cricket.

From England’s point-of-view, the series has further illustrated how crucial James Anderson has become to a seam attack that looked both one-paced and one-heighted at Lord’s. After averaging under 33 in just two of his previous 11 Test series (early-summer series against New Zealand and West Indies), the Lancastrian is now one good match away from his fourth consecutive series average of 26 or less. From the early days of his international career it was clear that Anderson could, in bowling parlance, “make the ball talk”. Unfortunately what he made the ball say was not always “Look out, batsman, I’m an unplayable outswinger”; slightly too often it was, “Ouch, I’ve been smashed for four again”.

As many of his team-mates have done, he has improved markedly with experience and, in an age of dominant batting and often pallid pace bowling, is now one of the most exciting players to watch in world cricket today.

Meanwhile there has been little talk in my house of anything other than India’s refusal to use the Decision Review System – easily my favourite decision review system – in the Test series in England later this summer.

The Confectionery Stall decided to consult one of the world’s leading umpires in order to acquire the officials’ view on this contentious matter. Unfortunately a stroll to and from my local station had resulted in no chance meetings with umpires from the ICC Elite Panel, and a telephone call to a confused Steve Bucknor resulted in the Jamaican Justice Dispenser informing me that he was being chased by a giant fire-breathing Allan Border, claiming that he had got an inside edge on that apparently plumb lbw appeal, whilst a fire-breathing dragon with Darrell Hair’s face was barking “that’s not out” in inflammatory morse code (a salutary lesson never to call a former Test umpire at 4.30am, particularly not after he has hosted a late-night cheese-tasting competition).

Therefore I was left with little option but to hire an ICC-ratified medium to make contact with the ghost of the legendary Frank Chester, who stood in a then-record 48 Tests from 1924 to 1955. After some small ice-breaking small-talk, in which Chester admitted that if he had had access to Hawk-Eye in the inter-war years, he would definitely have given Don Bradman out more often, just to see the look on Bradman’s face, he said that he is largely in favour of the DRS, but suggested some modifications to make it more spectator-friendly.

“There is much that I like about it,” commented the spirit of perhaps the greatest umpire of all time. “In particular, it provides the umpire with the opportunity to look triumphantly smug when his decision is upheld by technology. I would, however, suggest that a new signal for ‘that’s still out’ should be introduced, for when a batsman wrongly refers a decision. The umpire should raise the index finger in the traditional manner, but then add his middle finger and send the batsman on his way with a salute as old as time itself.”

Chester continued: “Imagine the atmosphere in a dressing room after a batsman who had clearly edged a ball then pointlessly referred it anyway. Development required: Dressing-room cameras and microphones to enable the viewer to see and hear the dismissed batsman claim, ‘I didn’t call for the referral. I was just asking for someone in the dressing room to make me a cup of tea.’”

Chester also observed that “boring batsmen always seem to be the ones to be reprieved”, and proposed that “a degree of democratic flexibility needs to be introduced to factor in whether a majority of the crowd wants to continue watching the appealed-against player bat”. He ruminated: “Perhaps Hawk-Eye could assume that the stumps are, say, 50% bigger when someone like Chris Tavare is batting.”

Chester concluded by expressing concerns that any system of appealing against a judicial decision inevitably leads to legal complications. “You wait,” he muttered ghostlily. “Lawyers are like Jonathan Trott. Once they get in, they are almost impossible to get out. Mark my words, within 10 years, most lbw decisions will be dragged through the courts like an American murder trial. It will take between five and 10 years to find out whether or not a batsman is out. And that is not going to help with over rates that are already so slow that if I had simply woken up from my 1957 death and looked at a scorecard of a complete day’s Test cricket, I would have assumed that a volcano had erupted at the tea interval and ended the day’s proceedings.”

The ghost of Frank Chester then thanked me for getting in touch, and said that he had to leave to umpire a Bodyline rematch.

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