As Darrell Hair, the strongest, ballsiest and most controversial umpire in cricket, prepares to make his return at Old Trafford tomorrow, administrators must ask themselves what they want of their decision-makers. Do they want them to retain their omnipotence so as to be able - as Jack Fingleton observed nearly 50 years ago - to send nations into paroxysms of agony or despair with just a twitch of the forefinger? Or do they want them to become simply ornamental, little more than sweater hooks and pebble counters?

It is a question that is at the heart of all technology issues in cricket and it was a question that was being asked, obliquely, in the Writing Room of the Lord's pavilion on Tuesday. The morning after the five days before can be a time for sore heads, but instead clear ones were needed as an assortment of umpires, match referees, eggheads with their gadgets and one spying columnist gathered to scrutinise some of the more contentious decisions of the first Test and wonder what might have been had Hawk-Eye, video replays and a referral system, whereby players are allowed up to three unsuccessful appeals, been in operation.

Alternative history, or wishful thinking, is a fun game that we all play from time to time. It has provided rich material for novelists who have wondered what might have happened had the Spanish Armada not been providentially destroyed, or had Hitler triumphed in 1945. Philip Roth, in The Plot against America, memorably speculated about the effects of Franklin Roosevelt losing the 1940 election to Charles Lindbergh. Less cerebrally, I often wonder what might have been had I been born Abramovich and not Atherton.

The most obvious result of this post-Test parlour game was to confirm how outstanding Simon Taufel, Steve Bucknor and, by extension, the elite panel umpires are. Of the 13 horrendously difficult decisions under review - ten leg-befores and three caught behinds - they got ten spot on with the naked eye, two that they agreed would have been overturned on appeal and one on which no one, except Hawk-Eye's predictive path (ie, the extrapolation of the path of the ball from the point at which it hit the pad), was certain.

There was a leg-before that hit front and back pads, producing a double, woody sound that everyone would have taken for an inside edge - everyone except Taufel, who called it spot on. There was an inswinger from Ryan Sidebottom to James Marshall given not out by Bucknor that, to judge from the expressions on the faces of Michael Vaughan and Sidebottom, would have resulted in a referral. It pitched about a nanometre outside leg stump. Who said Bucknor was too old?

But, and here's the rub, the two decisions that would have been overturned concerned the two batsmen - Brendon McCullum and Vaughan - who to a large extent shaped the course of the match. After video analysis, both would have been out leg-before in the thirties, although neither decision at the time was a “howler”. Bad luck, captain, you would have only five Lord's hundreds, not six. And who is to say that England would not now be 1-0 down?

Yet one decision, a leg-before appeal against Aaron Redmond off Monty Panesar, illustrated the potential dangers of the referral system as it stands. Redmond was hit above the knee-roll of the pad to a ball turning from about off stump and Taufel understandably could not be sure whether the ball would have hit off stump, or whether it would have gone over the top. He gave it not out in the match, as did everyone in the room after numerous replays. But Hawk-Eye's predictive technology had it hitting comfortably inside and below the top of the off stump.

Predictive technology is a problem. Dr Paul Hawkins, the creator of Hawk-Eye, is convinced of his software's accuracy and champions its use. The ICC is not and does not. Nor is it prepared to use gadgets such as Hot Spot and Snicko, which have become accepted television accompaniments to the cricket. There will be times when the viewer at home will be given more help than the umpire in the middle and the discrepancy will look silly. By insisting on the decision-making integrity of the on-field umpire and by not embracing technology fully, the referral system's present protocols' threaten to become an unsatisfactory muddle.

Instinctively I am uneasy about it (which is a personal view and contrary to the view of the MCC World Cricket committee on which I sit). Apart from the obvious reduction of the on-field umpire's authority, there are other potential problems. Some umpires do not speak English as their first language and, under pressure, may struggle to elucidate their questions to the third umpire; some umpiring decisions are so instinctive that by trying logically to deconstruct decisions to ask for information from the third umpire, on-field umpires may become confused and open to ridicule. And how comfortable are we with the challenge coming from players rather than the umpires?

Tuesday's exercise was not simply an academic one. The ICC's cricket committee and the MCC World Cricket Committee have recommended that a referral system be trialled in Test cricket in the near future. It was hoped that this would take place between England and South Africa later in the summer, but England are yet to be convinced (even though Duncan Fletcher was the first to champion the idea). The Sri Lanka/India series in July is the likeliest first opportunity to test its merits.

I would advise caution - at least until cricket is prepared to embrace technology fully and to accept that the video umpire is as, if not more important than the on-field umpire and until the players, umpires (and broadcasters, too) are on the same wavelength. Once a move towards greater technology is made, the public (and players) will demand more than simply getting rid of the obvious howlers. For now the system of referring line decisions works only pretty well and the game is lucky to have probably the best and most professional umpires it has ever had.

Gideon Haigh, that fine cricket writer who has written more sense on the subject than most, recently summed up the issue best when he said: “When cricket is thought too important to be left to mere humans then it is in danger of mattering too much to be enjoyed.”

After all, as Roth demonstrated in his account of the rise of fascism and anti-Semitism in the United States after Lindbergh's fictional presidential victory, alternative history is not necessarily better.

England take historical high ground

The first time that I realised how important history, tradition and symbolism were to the Australia cricket team was when, at the fag-end of the 1990-91 tour, I tried to swap my England cap (one of those horrible Casey Jones affairs) for a “baggy green”. The contemptuous look that the Australia player concerned gave me was matched only by the incredulity on his part that I should think of such a thing.

Since then I have always slightly shuddered at the memory whenever the cult of the baggy green has been rammed down English cricket's throat - which has been often. Justifiable pride, though, often morphed into syrupy self-parody: remember the puke-worthy sight of the Australia team cheering on Mark Philippoussis at Wimbledon wearing their baggy greens en masse?

Thankfully, the sermonising can stop. Last week, on the opening match of their tour to the West Indies against a Jamaica Select XI, Australia took to the field not only in garish baseball-style training caps but ones bedecked with a sponsor's logo.

It gets better. The sponsor is VB, otherwise known as Victoria Bitter, a truly horrific example of the utterly tasteless, fizzy lager that you get Down Under. This, too, in a week when the Australian Government announced a A$53million (about £26million) initiative to curb the binge drinking that apparently affects 10 per cent of secondary students.

England, of course, took to the field this week in smart dark blue cloth caps, upon which a crown and three lions were neatly embroidered. In the phoney war that will stretch all the way to Cardiff in July 2009, England have just struck the first blow.