Alan Fordham, the former Northamptonshire batsman and now the English Cricket Board's cricket operations manager, explained: ``This is part of a general overhaul of our approach to umpires. We are looking at ways of ensuring that we get the right men on our lists and they perform to full potential.''

Under the old system some umpires, conscious their livelihood depended on receiving good marks, have not always felt in a position to rebuke a player over behaviour since such action might antagonise the player's captain.

The abolition of marks will certainly give umpires greater freedom to enforce discipline. Law 42 states this is the job of the captains, and it is regrettable they can no longer be relied upon to do it.

The widespread use of slow-motion replays has emphasised that umpires make mistakes and this has contributed to the dissipation of the regard players used to have for them.

Unfortunately, the astonishingly high proportion of awkward decisions that are proved correct after repeated television scrutiny goes unnoticed. But batsmen, given out lbw and claiming that ``it wouldn't have hit another set'' are rarely contrite when television reveals the ball would have knocked out middle stump.

David Constant, England's senior umpire, said: ``The ECB were very receptive when we spoke of our problems. They want to be fair to all parties while allowing us to carry out their intention to have better standards of behaviour, which have declined sharply in recent years.''

The umpires' chairman, former Yorkshire batsman Barrie Leadbeater, confirms the strong relationship with the ECB, but adds: ``There are a couple of areas which we are not happy about and we are still negotiating.

``In particular, from this season, a captain who is dissatisfied with an umpire's performance in a particular match must fill out a section on the new form. If an umpire gets three of these, he must go for discussions with the ECB.

``However, the umpire will not be told which captain has complained, or which matches were involved, so he is at a real disadvantage. We hope this area of procedure can be made more open.''