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They - a committee of the Marleybone Cricket Club, the MCC - are updating the laws of cricket, just as they have done since they were first codified by the club on May 30, 1788.

The MCC has been internationally recognised ever since as the sole authority for the laws and their subsequent alterations and this latest revision are expected to be ratified next May. The draft is now with the nine full members of the International Cricket Council (ICC) for comments and recommendations.

Reflecting growing concern among administrators for the declining standards of behaviour at all levels, the committee has drafted a preamble that identifies the tenets of the 'spirit of the game'.

It has never been explicitly defined in the laws. Those who drafted them presumably deemed it redundant. Surely those who played appreciated what it meant. In Law 42, on unfair play, they stated simply: 'The captains are responsible at all times for ensuring that play is conducted within the spirit of the game.'

So that everyone is clear what is meant, it now has to be spelt out and specific penalties, such as run deductions, recommended for those who transgress.

It is an apt comment on the present state of affairs.

'Cricket is a game that owes much of its unique appeal to the fact that it should be played not only within its laws, but also within the spirit of the game. Any action which is seen to abuse his spirit causes injury to the game itself. The major responsibility for ensuring the spirit of fair play rests with the captains,' the preamble states.

The spirit of the game, it goes on, involves 'respect for your opponents, your own captain and team, the roles of the umpires and the game's traditional values'.

Acts against the spirit of the game are identified - disputing an umpire's decision 'by word, action or gesture', 'directing abusive language towards an opponent or umpire', indulging in cheating or sharp practice by appealing, knowing the batsman is not out, advancing towards an umpire in 'an aggressive manner' and seeking to distract an opponent 'either verbally or by harassment with persistent clapping or unnecessary noise under the guise of enthusiasm and motivation of one's own side'.

'Captains and umpires together set the tone for the conduct of a cricket match and every player is expected to make an important contribution to this,' the preamble asserts.

All the shenanigans listed are to be seen on any cricket ground.

Cricket, as Steve Waugh observed after his eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with Curtly Ambrose at Queen's Park Oval in 1995, is a tough, man's game. We wouldn't want it any different.

'If you want an easy game, take up netball,' was Waugh's advice. But there is a difference between being tough and playing within the spirit.

Waugh's own deliberate go-slow tactics in the World Cup match against the West Indies, aimed at excluding New Zealand from the Super Sixes, was within the law. But it was hardly within the spirit of the game.

Quarrelling with the umpire or intimidating him is nothing new. Nor is abusing opponents or orchestrated appealing - or even devious tactics. But that doesn't make it any more acceptable - and it certainly has become more pervasive.

In his recent autobiography, Sir Clyde Walcott claims the Australians started 'sledging' and that, 'in my heyday, they were all at it'. From what we have observed since, they haven't changed.

He was appalled at the behaviour of England's team in the Caribbean in 1954, calling it 'in my opinion, even stormier than the Bodyline tour of Australia in 1932-33'.

Things gradually only got worse so, under Sir Clyde's chairmanship, the ICC introduced its code of conduct and the match referees with their fines and suspension. He rates it as 'one of the ICC's greatest successes' in that it has been a deterrent to players' excesses.

It hasn't curbed everyone. Test match referees still have to keep their eyes and ears open as we have seen in the last couple of series in the Caribbean, not the least with Glenn McGrath who compromised his wonderful bowling with his objectionable manner.

The present series between England and New Zealand has also been irascible, prompting the referee to intervene.

Such behaviour does not start there. It is cultivated among the young who mimic what they see on television and the evidence from the recent Nortel championships was not encouraging.

Perhaps it was over-enthusiasm but much of the appealing was ridiculous and intimidating. Most of the teams I saw indulged in the 'persistent clapping and unnecessary noise' mentioned in the new preamble. Most disturbing of all were reports, reliable but hopefully exaggerated, of 'sledging', some of it even along racial lines.

Those in charge of our youth cricket, at local and West Indian level, are committed and conscientious individuals who do not need an MCC committee to clarify for them the meaning of the spirit of the game. Most of them were shining examples during their playing days.

As they coach their charges in the basic skills, they need to remind them every now and again of the most fundamental re-quirement of all, the essence that sets it aside from all other games.