As surely so as many another abuses of cricket's spirit, let alone its laws, from Spofforth to Streak.

It is depressingly true that England would have attempted something very similar in like circumstances, and, I have no doubt, any other contemporary Test eleven, with the conceivable exception of Australia under their present captain Mark Taylor (but not a good many past ones).

Whether England or other bowling attacks would have bowled negatively to such effect as Heath Streak in the last few overs, or Paul Strang earlier in the dramatic final afternoon, is questionable.

It was possible to feel uncomfortable about their tactics (and the glib acceptance of them by commentators, mainly ex-Test cricketers) and at the same time to admire their skill.

Let us leave the moral argument for a moment and consider the practical aspects. Something needs to be done, quickly, because the television era does not allow for protracted debates and years of International Cricket Council conferences before laws are changed. The Test and County Cricket Board, indeed, decided only a fortnight ago to penalise the wide ball with two runs rather than one in domestic first-class cricket next season in an attempt, which can only be partially successful, to dissuade slow bowlers from aiming into the rough outside the batsman's leg stump in order to eliminate safe scoring shots.

It is a start, a gesture, and I hope the new Board will try to get Australian agreement that the touring team should play to the same experimental rule.

As it happens it might be in their interests because, if Phil Tufnell remains in the England side, he will undoubtedly bowl over the wicket and outside the leg stump, as he has in the past with success against Mark Waugh, not to mention frequently last season for Middlesex and in the Bulawayo Test. Shane Warne will do the same at times.

I suggest two additional remedies if a serious attempt is to be made to force bowlers to aim straight. Firstly, a white line, either side of the wicket between the return crease and the stumps - say 2.5ft either side of the stumps - would assist umpires and bowlers alike.

Ian Robinson is not the only umpire standing in Test cricket at present who would have allowed the abuse to go unchecked as he weakly did on Sunday. Steve Dunne was too lenient too, unlike Cyril Mitchley in Port Elizabeth during the Christmas-time Test last winter, when he called wide against Dominic Cork as England were applying similar tactics.

This fact alone surely puts paid to any holier than thou claims to which an Englishman might have felt tempted in the immediate aftermath of the Bulawayo match.

That said, a majority of English umpires would have been firmer in asserting what was acceptable and what was not a good deal earlier than the final over of the match. It has, in fact, been standard practice in county cricket for some time for umpires to be a little stricter in the last hour of a game with their interpretation of what is and what is not within a batsman's reach, which is the defining criterion for a wide.

In Test cricket, however, negative bowling is actually more common on the fourth day, when one side is attempting to delay a declaration. The last thing anyone wants to do is to discourage wrist-spinners now that they have come back into Test cricket with a vengeance.

So it would have to be made very clear that only balls passing outside the 2.5ft markers, when they reach the line of the stumps, should be called wide. In other words, balls pitching outside the white line, but spinning back towards the stumps, would still be perfectly legitimate.

That would have applied on Sunday to many balls bowled by Paul Strang to Alec Stewart, but not to the left-handed Nick Knight. It would certainly not have applied to many of Streak's deliveries, which kept going wider and wider.

The second remedy worth considering is an amendment of the lbw law to allow decisions for balls pitching outside the leg stump provided the ball has been delivered from the opposite side of the wicket - round the wicket for a left-arm spinner, over it for a leg-spinner.

This would strengthen the hand of the spinner, and the wrist spinner especially, and it might well have persuaded Zimbabwe, with Strang in their side, to have tried to win the first Test by attacking bowling instead of saving it by stretching the law.

Now, morality. Sympathy for England on Sunday had to be tempered in the light of their own abuse of the game's spirit by their appealing for bat/pad catches, sometimes at least when they surely knew that the ball had struck only the pad.

The match referee, Hanumant Singh, felt the need to issue a public warning, and those watching on television could tell why. Alec Stewart's first reaction, it seems, whenever a ball pops up off a pad, is to yell ``catch it''.

He is not alone in that, as anyone close to the action in Test cricket round the world - and television cameras and microphones now mean that the armchair viewer is very close - will aver.

England's behaviour was no worse than that of their own or several other international sides. The practice of concerted appealing to pressurise an umpire goes back well before the present intimate television coverage, but it matters more now if only because children watching at home are persuaded that this is the way it should be done: appeal for everything and sooner or later the finger will go up. It already happens in school and club cricket. The ``catch it'' habit is ingrained in county cricket; these days a game never goes by without the superfluous injunction.

It is 23 years since Arthur Fagg made his protest against concerted appealing, in that case by the West Indies, by refusing to stand one morning during a Test at Edgbaston.

A decade on, in 1982-83, a member of England's team in Australia, Vic Marks, wrote in one of his dispatches to The Cricketer magazine: ``The team was also urged to improve its appealing, an area in which the Australians are undoubtedly superior. When appealing, the Australians make a statement: we ask a question.''

Not any more. Which is why we now have an international panel of umpires and match referees. Neither they, nor white lines, however, will solve this particular problem - only the resolve of players and captains to uphold the game's code of honour.