It was magnificent to watch, the batsmen getting their just desserts after mercilessly mauling the bowlers, their fangs removed, their weapons confiscated, all over the park. It just reminded all those who want to remember that cricket is still a game of ball versus bat not my bat versus your bat.

It raises questions about the temperament of some of our young batsmen. Are the pitches, the conditions and the bats becoming such strong allies that they are being lulled into believing that this is all they will encounter? And how will they prepare for the unexpected? How will they cope with a strange bowler or with seaming conditions? This is going to be the real problem with T20 and terribly one-sided surfaces like those in Karachi. If batsmen are treated like business class passengers on a luxury plane how will they be able to travel in a general compartment in a train the next day? Or are we reaching a situation where only pitches that favour batsmen will be produced? Pitches like the ones in the Asia Cup cannot produce good cricket as most of us understand it.

Bowlers need care, as does our game, which suffered some pretty grievous wounds at the ICC meeting. The funny thing is that every country got what it wanted and the game suffered. Zimbabwe got the best deal. They wanted money, they got it; they didn’t want cricket, now they don’t need to provide it. And England got what they wanted; the money that will flow in from organizing the next world T20 and a political victory by denying Zimbabwean players a world stage. It has very dangerous implications. Can teams be paid off in return for a denial of permission to play cricket? So if, for example Pakistan doesn’t want Australia to participate in the Champions Trophy, can they pay them off and ask them not to come? Where does it stop? Either Zimbabwe is in the ICC or it isn’t. A staging association cannot have discretion over who it invites and who it doesn’t to a world event.

Worse still is the decision to change the result of the Oval Test between England and Pakistan. Little that I have seen in world cricket over the years staggers me as much as this. Maybe the umpire made a mistake but hang on, a team refused to play cricket. That is inadmissible. We can’t have a situation where a team sits in a dressing room because it doesn’t like what is happening in the middle. And we certainly can’t have a situation where it is rewarded by having a result changed. So what is next? If India had sat in the dressing room in Sydney protesting about the umpiring, would the match have been labelled a draw? Would the series have been level 1-1? Couldn’t England have protested when Sreesanth was clearly out lbw just before the rain came down at Lords and denied them a win? That series should have been 1-1 then?

Once a cricket match is over, it cannot be revived, results cannot be tampered with. It is dead from that point of view. Only gallantry awards can be conferred posthumously. In an effort to placate members, we are creating very dangerous precedents. And you cannot wish them away by saying “this cannot be treated as a precedent”. The same procedure that allowed this will do so again. What next? Sms votes on whether a player is out? Where are the statesmen? The custodians of cricket?

Meanwhile it is two months to the Champions Trophy. We do not yet know where it will be played; indeed, if it will be played. There are spectators who like to follow their teams, corporations who want to reward employees, sponsors who need to make plans. The time has come to take a call.