Atherton: changes will be made | Debate: who's to blame for England debacle? | Bell and Panesar should be dropped | David Gower: Gayle leads from the front | 51? Fifty-blooming-one? | England all out for 51 | England sink to their knees | What the papers say

How reassuring to know, in these fast-changing times, that one of cricket’s most basic tenets — “the umpire’s decision is final” — is as true today as it ever was. Subject, of course, to the following minor sub-clause. “Just so long as the case has first been referred to a man in a small room parked in front of a television set, a gadget known as Hawkeye, the chief executive of Sky TV, the Prime Minister of Jamaica, the bloke in the Rastafarian hat holding up play behind the bowler’s arm, the Barmy Army, the Red Stripe girl with the pom pom, and the European Court of Human Rights.”

Cricket’s experiment with the referral system was meant to be confined to umpiring decisions, although England yesterday managed to refer us back to the 1986 David Gower 5-0 blackwash tour, when the most popular song in the Caribbean at the time was a little ditty entitled Captain My Ship Is Sinking. And they kept playing it. This time it should have been reissued for the benefit of Andrew Strauss as the new England captain came down with a splash not heard in the West Indies since Andrew Flintoff fell off his pedalo. Referred they should be. Straight to the nearest batting clinic.

Until yesterday’s carnage, the biggest talking point was the umpiring. Or the umpiring by proxy. It’s come a bit too late for the game’s most celebrated umpire, otherwise Dickie Bird’s autobiography, Not Out!, would now have to be a trifle wordier: Not Out! Or At Least I Thought It Was Until I Saw The Replay. The Jamaica Test match has (appropriately enough at a time when Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff were appearing on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?) occasionally resembled more of a game show than a game of cricket.

All that’s missing while the players ponder on whether to take a punt is to offer them the opportunity to take a fifty-fifty or phone a friend.

There is a case for consigning human error, with curved bats and rubber spiked batting gloves, to the Lord’s Museum, although the counter argument is not exclusively confined to the octogenarian section of the MCC membership still raising a daily glass of pink gin to the relief of Mafeking. Namely, that the steady erosion of cricket’s most venerable traditions is worthy of a mild snort of protest, and even, on occasions, a full blown harrumph.

Fancy becoming an umpire? Well, it’s not the simple job you might think it is, so let’s see if you’ve got what it takes by running through the strict qualifications demanded on the application form.

1) “Can you count to six?”

2) “Can you remember to hand back the bowler’s sunglasses at the end of the over?”

3) “Er, that’s it.”

The way the game is going, they might as well borrow Mr Bird from Madame Tussaud’s or any old dummy from a tailor’s window. Bowlers will tell you that they need umpires to help them get their bearings, which is probably why they send down so many no-balls in the nets, but if that’s all (and that’s the way it’s going) why pay them to stand there at all? Save the money for a more deserving cause, like a collection tin for KP when next year’s IPL auction fails to keep pace with inflation and drops below the million quid mark.

The concept of an umpire being forced to change his decision is not a new one. In fact, you can go back to the 19th century, when WG Grace was given out caught behind first ball, calmly scratched out his mark for the next delivery and told the embarrassed official: “They’ve come to see me bat, not you umpire.” However, the downgrading of umpires has moved on a bit since then, beginning with the television cameras being brought in to adjudicate on close run-out decisions. It was first tried in a domestic one-day match at Lord’s, when, despite Imran Khan being run out by at least a yard, the umpire decided to refer it anyway as an historic first. There was only the one camera. All the third official was able to see at the decisive moment was the square leg umpire’s posterior. So he had no choice but to give it not out.