What a palaver. The series is barely under way, and already there are innuendos that a Test match against Pakistan ought not so much to be presided over by three umpires and an ICC referee as a team of Scotland Yard forensic scientists. Namely, if the Pakistani fingers currently around England's throat are dusted down for evidence, large chunks of red leather will be discovered lurking beneath the nails.
However, whatever might have looked a touch dodgy on television pictures, neither of the two umpires in charge of this match has found anything remotely suspicious about the ball. If anyone has had their reputation damaged here, it is the manufacturers. The ball has been changed five times for going out of shape, giving rise to suspicions that when Lord's took possession of this particular box of shiny red objects, slightly squashed in appearance, they had inadvertently been sent a consignment of Edam cheese.
It is also worth remembering that it was the English cricket authorities who elevated ball-tampering from the trivial business it is by refusing to disclose whether the ball exchanged during a one-day international here during Pakistan's last visit was the result of accidental damage or intentional malpractice. The result has been to turn the equivalent of a parking ticket into a capital offence.
The first mutterings that Pakistan's bowling talents might not be entirely God-given arose several years ago when the then New Zealand captain, Martin Crowe, arrived at a press conference clutching a ball that did not so much look as though it had been exposed to a thumbnail as a combined harvester.
Ball-tampering is neither a new innovation, nor a Pakistani one.
We then had Allan Lamb's fearless newspaper exposZ on Pakistan's 1992 tour, shortly to be given another airing in an equally fearless book, which may or may not contain a chapter devoted to a former England fast bowler's penchant for turning a seam into something sharp enough to slice a loaf of bread, or a former England captain's curious habit of impregnating his shirt with Vasoline.
Ball-tampering is neither a new innovation, nor a Pakistani one. In fact, there is a magazine entitled Innovations, one of those pamphlets which drops out of the Sunday papers and tries to sell you almost anything. There was one yesterday advertising essential gadgets - a portable bidet, earrings that help you slim, a hat with a built-in battery fan, an anti-snoring nose clip, and a blackhead remover. No sign of an automatic ball-tampering device, but someone will doubtless invent one soon.
There have been all sorts of theories as to how Pakistani bowlers make the ball move around in the air, including, would you believe, the hypothesis that Pakistani sweat has different properties to western sweat. There may be something in this, because whatever England's bowlers were rubbing into the ball yesterday, the outcome was not reverse swing, but re- verse gear.
When it comes to cheating, fiddling with a ball comes a long way behind bowlers and fielders making fraudulent appeals. This match is no exception, and it makes you wonder why the Oxford Dictionary continues to peddle its definition of ``it's not cricket'' when there are now 13 sections of Law 42 (Unfair Play) and 27 sub-clauses.
One of these cites ``infringing the spirit'' of the game, which is what England were up to when their over-rate began to dip on the back of bootlaces coming undone and the sudden need for tactical pow-wows. Pakistan responded when their substitute fielder, Moin Khan, who has previous convictions for engaging batsmen in unsolicited conversation, was invited by the umpires to button it. The high moral ground belongs to no one, but what happens today will determine who holds the high morale ground.