DO NOT underestimate the craving for tea and cucumber sandwiches that a first-class umpire of a certain age and appetite will have after a sweltering session in the middle. Last off the field at the start of the interval and first back on it 20 minutes later, he understandably feels miffed that he has no time for a second cuppa while batsmen can continue to put their feet up and seemingly any bowler can carry on having a rub-down.

So at their annual end-of-season meeting yesterday, the first-class umpires put it to ECB that the tea interval be extended by ten minutes to half an hour’s duration and five minutes be added to lunch (or luncheon as it used to be called in The Times and could justifiably be described again). This would then last for three quarters of an hour. To accommodate the arbiters of cricketing justice, who, unlike the younger players, have to be on the field for every ball, are not permitted shooting sticks to sit on and who cannot take comfort breaks, play could start not at 11am in county matches but 10.30 or 10.45.

“We never have enough time in the intervals,” Barrie Leadbeater, a senior first-class umpire and former Yorkshire batsman, said. “We have to be first back on the field and, from the players’ viewpoint, shirts and equipment have to be changed as well as lunch and tea taken. Alan Fordham, ECB’s cricket operations manager, was at the meeting and is always sympathetic. But he said it is trying to put on as much entertainment to the public as it can. ”

The issue will go before the meeting of ECB’s cricket committee, chaired by Dennis Amiss, on October 20 and 21. “We can see where the umpires are coming from,” Fordham said. “They are keener on a longer tea than lunch break because theirs is five minutes shorter than everybody else has. They want to sit down and have an extra cup of tea because often the middle session is a long one. And yes, this might lead to jokes about cucumber sandwiches on Test Match Special.

“The tea interval is supposedly at 4.10 in championship matches, but in practice it does not start until about 4.40 as the players are often behind with the over-rates. We have to gain a balance — do we lengthen the hours or play or start earlier in the morning? The number of overs in the day could be reduced, but there would be opposition to that. The fact that lunch and tea intervals last for 40 and 20 minutes respectively is largely historical — I have never known them be anything other than that length in first-class cricket.”