MCC, which has responsibility for the Laws of Cricket, is to ask the ICC to overturn its decision last week to change the result of the forfeited Test match between England and Pakistan at the Brit Oval in 2006 to a draw. This verdict, Keith Bradshaw, the secretary, will say, contravenes the spirit of the game as well as the Laws. The club’s world committee is also opposed to any alteration to Law 21, which states that the result should not be changed. “Cricket is the worse for this decision and it was opposed unanimously by the ICC’s cricket committee, on which I sit,” he said.

David Morgan, the new president of the ICC, said at Lord’s yesterday that he had also opposed the decision by the governing body, which overruled its cricket committee. In addition, Robert Griffiths, QC, who represented Darrell Hair, the umpire who accused Pakistan of ball-tampering, at his tribunal hearing against the ICC, claimed that the ruling was “unprecedented and dangerous”. The ICC had no power to change the result, he added.

“It is historical revisionism of the worst kind,” Griffiths said. “It was plainly connected to the negotiations over Zimbabwe. \ have been emasculated so as to appease Zimbabwe and its allies and for the questionable purpose of ensuring that the ICC World Twenty20 comes to England next year.

“Law 21(10) is unequivocal: once the umpires have agreed with the scorers the correctness of the scores, the result cannot be changed. The reasoning is vacuous. It was, officially, ‘based on the view that in light of the unique set of circumstances, the original result was felt to be inappropriate’. This is even though ICC board member witnesses admitted under oath at Hair’s tribunal that the umpires’ decisions were in accordance with the Laws.”

The ECB, which abstained from the vote, said that it had no knowledge that Pakistan intended voting. “We were happy to refer this to the ICC cricket committee but would not have been if there had been a move to overturn a result brought about through a technical umpiring decision,” the ECB said.

Scyld Berry, the editor of Wisden, said: “Wisden will record the ICC’s change of verdict but not endorse it.”