In other words cricketers, particularly professionals burdened with pragmatic considerations like winning a Test match or paying the mortgage, calculate that over a career the balance of good and bad decisions will break even. If they are lucky. So why tip the balance of the odds by doing the umpire's job for him.

So far, so good. But by hiding behind the umpire's vulnerability, are players cheating? What we are discussing here is nothing new. When I played Yorkshire League cricket, I don't remember too many batsmen voluntarily giving up their wicket. Australians have always left it to the umpire and South Africans would have to be placed under deep hypnosis and fed mind-altering substances before they walked. I am told there was a time when walking was expected in the English county game, though I can't remember it.

Cricket's dark secret has always been that the game's benign character hid a duplicitous soul. In reality, the flannelled fool possessed a Machiavellian nature. It was ever thus, with Dr W G Grace often setting the example. The difference nowadays is one of perception created by television coverage. Modern technology can show you the whites of their eyes, not to mention the error of their ways. It doesn't exactly make umpires surplus to requirements - someone has to hold the players' sweaters - but it alters the nature of their job.

The traditional conflict between umpire and player was based on the understanding that the player was trying to get away with it and the umpire's job was to thwart him. Both sides accepted that no one was perfect.

It was a bargain between players and officials and generally speaking it worked. Nowadays, prying cameras expose the flaws. An in-house dispute between two parties used to settling their own differences has become a matter for public debate. In Jonty Rhodes's case, television not only proved the ball hit his pad and not his bat but also showed that players in a better position than the umpire to judge what happened did nothing to help. Indeed, they did the opposite and by appealing conspired in the injustice.

Similarly, the slow-motion replays showed that the ball from Allan Donald did hit Michael Atherton's glove and was caught cleanly. It also showed that if Michael Atherton didn't know it had hit him he must be paralysed from the waist up, which is not the case. So it brings into question the whole business of the player's responsibility.

It is no good coaches and managers bleating about adjudicators when they deliberately set out to work against rather than with them. The present situation, where the appealing is incessant and often absurd, can only be changed by those doing the appealing and those encouraging it.

Similarly, it would be ideal, but too much to expect, if batsmen who know they are out set off without waiting for the umpire. In both instances, increased use of the television technology would be a boon. It's no good going on about 'trial by television'. It's already happening and, in any event, it is absurd not to take advantage of a facility which would make the umpire's job much less disputatious and stressful.

Mervyn Kitchen's statement to Simon Hughes that he didn't enjoy the Trent Bridge Test and thought it might be his last was a sad indictment of a system in need of improvement. That said, it would not help if the game became too sanitised. Had Michael Atherton walked or been given out on television evidence we would have missed one of the most dramatic sporting confrontations since Frazier and Ali tried to kill each other.

Donald's assault upon Atherton and Michael's unyielding defiance was one of those episodes when sport is lifted into an altogether different dimension, where ritual and structure disappear to be replaced by a direct confrontation between the immovable object and the irresistible force. David Lloyd's assessment of Atherton as a ``stubborn bugger'' was never better substantiated and Donald's assault upon the mind and body of his opponent was made all the more thrilling by his anger at the umpire's decision adding a yard or two to his pace and giving extra impetus to his thrilling athleticism.

It was heroic stuff and I shall forever remember, after Donald had made a ball rear at Atherton's throat, the look that followed. Captions would have had Donald saying: ``If you think that was quick stick around for a moment'' and Atherton replying: ``If that's the best you can do then I'll be here all day''. It was drama of the highest order. It involved two men settling a score. The fun begins when cricket gets personal.

Had Michael Atherton walked we would have missed the fireworks. We might have lost the game and Headingley could have been meaningless except to provide the epilogue to yet another series. Now it is make or break at Leeds and a proper end to a good series. Whatever happens, Michael Atherton has made a significant contribution to the series both for what he did and what he didn't do.

I am his greatest admirer, as a player and a man. But I have this niggling worry at the back of my mind about what happened at Trent Bridge. It was interesting to talk to friends down the pub who were up in arms at players diving in the football World Cup. They had no doubt they were cheats. So what is the difference, I asked, between a football player diving and falsifying a penalty and a cricketer pretending he isn't out when he knows he is.

And while we're about it, here's something else to chew on: Most cricketers of my acquaintance are keen golfers. I have little doubt that if they played an opponent who deliberately moved the ball in the rough or marked the ball on the green nearer the hole they would call him for cheating and never play with him again. But what is the difference between that and taking part in an appeal simply to pressurise the umpire into making a mistake?

The only conclusion we came to in the pub was that arguing makes you thirsty and cheating is a strong word to use, particularly about cricket. But if the definition of cheating is to gain unfair advantage by deception or breaking the rules, which is what it says in my dictionary, then I think it succinctly describes some of what is happening in the game. Don't you?