Strict directives are percolating from the stage into the audience: don't walk on the playing area; don't play ball games against this wall; don't make too much noise or dress in outrageous garb or bring your own six-packs. What's next? - don't cough without covering your mouth; don't lick the back of your spoon. Are we in a cricket ground or at an academy of etiquette? Test cricket is supposed to be entertainment not church.

Conformism rules the age. Self-expression is dissuaded, bowling styles are largely uniform (''get it in the corridor of uncertainty''), field settings are shockingly stereotyped. Everything seems geared to a formula, and if it doesn't work, there's no fallback.

The first two days of the Old Trafford Test illustrated this in microcosm. The England bowlers deviated little from the basic plan to frustrate the batsmen into submission - with little attempt to vary the pace or use different grips or try a bit of flight. Two slips stood forlornly to the seamers, fielding perhaps half a dozen balls, none of which carried. Against South Africa, the masters of attrition, the game was crying out for innovation and ideas, but England were stuck in a mire of monotony.

This is not a direct criticism of the captain or the coach or even the players. Blindfolded by the routine of professional cricket, they can't clearly see the limitations of the culture that raised them. A county environment of ways-to-do-things and ways-not-to, of guidelines and restrictions from the era of a Conservative Prime Minister who tucked his shirt into his underpants. This impenetrable mould can now only be broken by someone with exceptional skill or character. David Lloyd has tried nobly but largely failed.

All is not lost. Take New Zealand. In the 1992 World Cup they showed what could be done with limited resources. With imagination and enterprise they opened the bowling with a spinner, they put fielders in unconventional positions, they gave the ball in mid-innings to Chris Harris, who delivered dribbly leg-cutters off the wrong foot. With a pop-gun attack and a world-class batsman hobbling on only one leg, they got within a whisker of the final.

This was not Test cricket, of course, but the same sorts of ideas could be applied. With more encouragement to ``do'' rather than ``don't'' England's cricket team could one day be more successful.

Apart from anything else, the enthusiastic children flighting their leg-spinners and heaving their pulls around the outfield desperately seek a charismatic figure to plaster on their bedroom walls.

ADDING to this restrictive culture was the ICC idea of match referees, introduced six years ago. There were four referees then, there are 19 now, Are they just jobs for the boys?

Former Pakistan captain Javed Burki, the referee for the first three Tests, said: ``We're not just disciplinarians, but also there to cast a discerning eye over pitches, grounds, facilities and make reports about their suitability.''

``Of course, in England, all the Test grounds are excellent so there's not that much to do.'' So little in fact, that during Thursday's play, Burki managed to get through a large part of John Arlott's autobiography.