'Don't tell me that Mark Robinson, the Sussex cricket manager, is talking gibberish when he attributes the development of Luke Wright in good part to the experience and lessons he has gleaned from tackling the likes of Murali and Warne' © Getty Images

On the ever-revolving merry-go-round that is county cricket, it’s that time of year again, the time when the horse-trading shifts from grapevine gossip, newspaper plants, surreptitious nods and conspiratorial winks to full-blown contract offers and negotiations. That import quotas for 2008 will be halved promises to make the upheavals more divisive, if, admittedly, more entertaining.

Although the planet’s premier domestic circuit still has no formal transfer system – there’s nothing so shamelessly or shabbily capitalistic as an actual fee – recent years have, rightly and properly, seen repressive tradition, underpinned by the feudal benefit system, consigned to a home in the neighbourhood of oblivion. Just four decades ago, Barry Knight, a Test allrounder, was obliged to sit out an entire season after having the unmitigated gall to leave Essex for Leicestershire; in 1972, Bob Willis was ordered to miss the first half of term after quitting Surrey for Warwickshire. The unsatisfactory List system having finally been discarded, and with decent wages having rightly replaced benefits as the most effective bait, freedom of movement is now enshrined.

The downside, however amusing to read about, is the bickering and infighting, the accusations of tapping-up and general conduct unbecoming. With the county chairmen having voted to henceforth confine themselves to one overseas signing per club (as distinct, of course, from fishing in that pool brimming with disenchanted South Africans), the competition for the jewels – as evinced by Warwickshire’s scruple-free pursuit of Sussex’s Mushtaq Ahmed – will doubtless ensure that the principles of gentlemanly conduct fly out of the window with even greater alacrity.

It didn’t have to be this way. The decision to reduce import quotas was entirely financial, a means of cutting those soaring wage bills. On every other level, it was wholeheartedly misguided. I have spoken to three highly respected county coaches and one prominent ECB official over the past few weeks and not one thought the rethink would reap any worthwhile rewards. In fact, they believed entirely the opposite.

Their message was unequivocal: playing with and against the galaxy’s best is precisely the sort of finishing school every aspiring Englishman should be compelled to attend. Indeed, with Inzamam-ul-Haq now sporting the white rose of Yorkshire, it is hard to think of another world-beater over the past 40 years who has not graced the shires, however briefly, bar Jeff Dujon, Ian Healy and Adam Gilchrist, keepers all. Name me a leading spinner who has not played in the County Championship since it was split into two divisions in 2000 and I’ll buy you a lifetime’s subscription to the Home Shopping Network.

Consider the following XI: Langer, Sangakkara, Younis Khan, Chanderpaul, Inzamam, Laxman, Clark, Harbhajan, Nel, Kaneria and Murali. Or this one: Fleming, Marshall, Hussey (D), Katich, White, Klusener, Yasir Arafat, Vaas, Steyn, RP Singh and Mushtaq Ahmed. They’ve all been treading the boards here this season as unqualified foreign goods. And there was me forgetting the boy Warne. What a silly billy.

Nobody would be so daft as to claim that this necessarily prepares Englishmen (and honorary/naturalised ones) for the rigours of the international fray better than their counterparts across the globe. But don’t tell me that Mark Robinson, the Sussex cricket manager, is talking gibberish when he attributes the development of Luke Wright in good part to the experience and lessons he has gleaned from tackling the likes of Murali and Warne. Or that Surrey’s meteoric 18-year-old paceman Chris Jordan has not enhanced his prospects by dismissing Chanderpaul, Di Venuto and Inzamam in his first month as a pro. Or that Mark Alleyne, the most successful county captain of recent times, now chief coach at Gloucestershire, is kidding himself when he claims that even a month spent in the same dressing room as a notable achiever is preferable to none.

Yet by reducing the scope to attract the best - whose availability, in any event, is increasingly constricted - those county chairmen have chosen short-term gain over long-term investment. Besides, in all likelihood, those savings will be redistributed to/frittered away on (take your pick) Kolpak signings and wannabe Brummies, but that’s another highly-emotive issue for another time.

As for that hoary old theory that imports restrict opportunities for unequivocal Poms, do me a favour. Are its proponents really suggesting that there are more than 300 putative world-conquerors lurking out there between Land’s End and John O’Groats? Not even the Professional Cricketers’ Association, the body most concerned with preserving jobs for the (local) boys, would claim that with any vestige of faith or credibility.

It also bears mentioning that top-quality professional sport is about entertainment, not restrictive trade practices that deprive the audience. Would football’s Premiership be lionised the world over, much less attract so many sellouts and broadcasting billions, if it did not offer its customers such an array of talented wares? In cricket, the fact that centrally-contracted players, the nation’s best, seldom turn out for their counties was the rationale for restoring import quotas from one to two when the Championship embraced promotion and relegation: to give the clubs an alternative tool with which to raise interest, membership and crowds. That playing standards have risen, as is almost universally agreed, surely cannot be unconnected.

For all its dependance on profits from international fixtures (which can only improve if its home products are better prepared to graduate), county cricket would dearly love to stand more steadily on its own two feet. Measures such as this suggest its most powerful constituents would rather shoot a hole in each shoe.

	At Rose Bowl, in the first ODI against India, Ian Bell revealed himself to be an authentic international batsman, shedding the shackles of uncertainity and inhibition © Getty Images

For all the stoutness of his Test average (42.39), he has seldom convinced during his four years at the highest level. He has always looked even younger than his years – and not simply because of that slight frame, those cherubic cheeks and that almost sheepish air. It was as if he, too, could not believe he belonged.

While occasionally allowing it to dribble out, he seldom exuded confidence. All too often he appeared hemmed in by a preoccupation with technique, constricted in ambition, restrained, unable to turn good starts into match-turning scores, unable to impose. Which might explain why he has often done better at No.6. Until last night he reminded me of the primary school swot who always finishes top of the class but struggles to keep up once he rises to secondary school and comes up against all the other swots in the catchment area.

But one shot last night prompted even this non-believer to accept, not only that patience remains the greatest virtue, but that he may have been doing Bell a grave disservice. Played on the rise, with something approaching a swagger, an early cover-driven four off RP Singh, his third scoring stroke, demanded to be taken seriously, exceedingly seriously. Suddenly, here was evidence of an authentic international batsman, an accomplished craftsman shedding the shackles of uncertainty and inhibition. “I belong!” it roared. “And now you’re gonna believe it!”

It was that shot that facilitated the other vivid blow in his long-awaited maiden ODI century, at the 46th attempt - a straight six off Piyush Chawla fuelled by footwork that warranted a response from Ginger Rogers.

We’ve been here before, of course: how many illusory “defining" moments did we swear we saw from Mark Ramprakash or Graeme Hick? The difference is that Bell, thanks in the main to central contracts and the manifest benefits of playing in a (mostly) winning team, has always felt secure within the dressing room. No less significantly, he has also been backed by selectors who believe in consistency and a fair crack of that once-merciless whip. British cricket lovers can only hope this is the start of a beautiful relationship.

	Bishen Singh Bedi's repeated verbal attacks against Muralitharan has forced the Sri Lankan spinner to consider legal action © AFP

So it’s come, finally, to this. Muttiah Muralitharan, the first truly plausible challenger to SF Barnes as the bowler likeliest to win a Test singlehanded, has hired some extremely learned friends to file a defamation case against his most voluble and repetitious critic, Bishan Bedi. A sad week for cricket perhaps, even, arguably, for free speech, but a damned good one for those who maintain that this is one argument that has gone on for far too long.

After a decade of stoicism and cheek-turning, Murali has certainly decided he has had more than enough. The facts seem plain enough. In what was merely his latest tirade, Bedi had not only alleged that he was consciously taking advantage of that deformed right elbow and likened his action to that of a shot-putter (it’s a wonder he didn’t accuse him of taking steroids); he also insisted that the ICC had created a “monster” by allowing the Sri Lankan to continue bowling. The Sri Lankan Cricket Board stood by their man, charging that Bedi’s remarks were intended to "harm the bowler's reputation and achievements".

According to the Daily Mirror in Colombo, Murali’s manager, Kushil Gunasekara, had a series of meetings last Sunday with Sudath Perera from legal eagles Sudath Perera Associates. "We are writing a letter to Bedi,” confirmed Perera, “and if needed, he will be dragged into a court of law." Colombo's leading lawyer Romesh De Silva, the President's Counsel, is also in Murali’s corner. Although Murali is receiving support from his board, Perera and company, who have also represented former Test captain Arjuna Ranatunga, will file an independent case against Bedi without having to bother those busy little bodies at the BCCI.

If there’s one priceless advantage an ex-player has over active ones it is that their tongue is not gagged and bound by fussy and over-sensitive administrators. They can fire both barrels with something approaching impunity. There is, however, the law of the land to contend with.

Most retirees, as members of a largely convivial transcontinental brotherhood who usually like nothing better than staying nice and friendly so they can land a plum post in punditry, choose not to step over the line distancing fair comment from needless and pointless abuse. Bedi, sadly, has long been one of those rare exceptions. I wonder why. Is it really that his sense of justice and fair play has been so grievously offended (in which case, surely he had already made his views on the subject abundantly clear a dozen times over)? Or might it just be that, like so many ex-players who see their records smithereened, being a good loser is no more a part of his repertoire now than it was three decades ago?

There is a precedent for Murali, albeit not a terribly encouraging one. In 1996, Ian Botham and Allan Lamb sued Imran Khan for libel after he accused them in print of ball-tampering and being "racist, ill-educated and lacking in class": they were not successful. The jury accepted by a majority of 10-2 Imran's claims that he had been misquoted and was only trying to defend himself after admitting that he had once tampered with a ball in a county match. Branded a "complete exercise in futility" by the judge, the trial left Botham facing an estimated legal bill of £260,000 and Lamb one for £140,000.

The difference between the two cases appears to be twofold: Imran did not accuse Botham or Lamb by name; he was also contrite. George Carman QC, his heavyweight counsel, informed the jury that his client had offered an apology to Botham and Lamb, insisting that he had been misquoted, and that he had been willing to send a letter to The Times for publication, to make that apology public. “Sorry”, however, seems to be Bedi’s saddest word. Mind you, to be fair, given that his darts have been aimed with such unerring accuracy and consistency, nobody would believe him if he did express any regrets.

Now it may just be that Murali’s extremely learned friends are taking him for a ride. To my almost certain knowledge, the concept of “no win, no fee” does not yet exist in Sri Lanka. Yet at the risk of sounding hopelessly naïve, I seriously doubt they are extracting the Michael quite so blatantly as that. Murali is an icon, a national treasure, a symbol of possibility in that beautiful but benighted island, its greatest gift to the planet since the tea plantations opened for business. Given the Botham-Lamb result, why even consider recommending such a costly plunge unless the President’s Counsel sincerely believed there was a decent chance of success?

Of course nobody wants to see such a case come to court, especially those of us who recall Bedi’s maverick spirit and unmatchably gorgeous action with huge affection and heartfelt gratitude. On the other hand, if you are also of the opinion that it may be the only way to silence those bitter snipers, bring on the wigs.

Editor's note: Unfortunately, we have had to disable comments from this post because many of them have been defamatory, racist and abusive.

	Chris Schofield's selection into the England Twenty20 squad, after he had dropped out of the professional game, is heartening considering the lack of legspinners in English cricket © Getty Images

The recall of Chris Schofield to the international fold, for next month’s official dignification of Twenty20 in South Africa, was half the reason for this. Dropping out of the professional game and returning is a trick few have accomplished. Even fewer – Paul Taylor and Ian Ward spring to mind – have come back with a sufficient bang to earn national selection. Small wonder that, upon hearing of his selection for the 30-strong longlist, his mother burst into tears. That her determined son happens be a legspinner spoke to the romantic in us all.

No less heartening was the concurrent showing at Scarborough for England Under-19 of two teenage twirlers, Essex’s Tom Westley (18) and Hampshire’s Liam Dawson (17), who had shared eight wickets to make their Pakistani counterparts follow-on on Sunday then scooped up the first five in the second innings, setting up an innings victory.

That such crumbs should supply any sort of comfort whatsoever tells you all you need to know about the state of English spin. Consider the brewing debate over how many slowies the selectors should nominate for the winter’s three Tests in Sri Lanka. On the basis that Michael Vaughan and Pietersen offer more loop, flight and enterprise than most of the regular county set, does anybody bar Monty Panesar DEMAND selection? Not that I am aware of, hence the likelihood that Rashid will be blooded even earlier than Schofield was. And the latter now accepts that, at 21, he was immature, perhaps a tad arrogant, and that coping with expectations was way beyond his ken.

Not that we have any justifiable reason for expectation. The last world-beating England off-spinner was Jim Laker half a century ago; the last world-beating England leggie was BT Bosanquet, a century ago. Of the dozen spinners with 200 Test wickets, the only Pom is Derek Underwood, and his offerings might just as easily have been characterised as medium-paced cutters. South Africa are even more unblessed, yet Daniel Vettori’s membership of that elite is proof that seamer-friendly conditions should be no bar to entry.

Fitness permitting, Monty should gain admission to the club, and Ashley Giles probably would have done so but for the physical ailments that reportedly make his retirement imminent, but the question remains: why is it such a struggle?

The common complaint, as Giles reinforced when we chatted in 2005, is spin-resistant pitches, a legacy at least in part of Britain’s traditionally inclement climate. The same resistant pitches, presumably, that have seen Mushtaq Ahmed emerge as the key bowler this summer and the past four. In fairness, of late, global warming has led to drier early-season conditions, hence, perhaps, the encouragement for, and strides taken by, the boy Rashid - in Yorkshire of all places.

But the suspicion remains that the traditional English mindset – cautious, pragmatic, proud, more fearful of embarrassment than failure - is at odds with the art of spin. It says much, surely, that the one significant Test career chart an English spinner does top - Ray Illingworth’s economy rate of 1.91 runs per over is the lowest among those who have bowled 10,000 balls over the past 50 years – is one that celebrates defensiveness.

The exceptions-in-chief - the two Phils, Edmonds and Tufnell, and Johnny Wardle – were all mavericks who fell foul of Lord’s. Hence one’s delight at Schofield’s rebirth. However one yearns for Monty to take a leaf out of his mentor Bishan Bedi’s book by tossing it up a little more and bowling a smidge slower, Schofield, another maverick, is likelier to defeat opponents through wit and surprise. Mark Butcher, his captain at Surrey, is certainly quick to laud his flipper.

If he can marry that natural brio and brimming self-belief to control – and his Twenty20 curmudgeonliness suggests he may well be on the way to doing just that - Schofield may yet emerge as the fully-formed “mystery spinner” Nasser Hussain clamoured for when he was initially selected against Zimbabwe in 2000. Sharing a dressing-room with Ian Salisbury, England’s last Great White Legspin Hope, has clearly been beneficial.

“He told me to get the field right because unless you’re Shane Warne you’re always going to bowl bad balls,” Schofield told me a couple of weeks ago. Ah, the W-word. “People need to realise that you can’t compare anyone to him. Fortunately, I think most do now. Look at Adil Rashid. Yorkshire have treated him very well, he’s bowling very consistently and turns it a long way, but the Indians got after him. You’ve got to expect to struggle.”

Schofield, of course, is as well-versed in the art of struggling as any contemporary cricketer. Happily, he is luckier than Edmonds, Tufnell and Wardle: the England selectors and management these days tend to be more enlightened and compassionate, not to say more indulging of apparent soloists.

Let’s just hope, as he develops that pragmatic streak, that Schofield can hang on to that lil’ ol’ devil inside.

	That the “tactic” appeared to galvanise Zaheer Khan, however, should be seen as punishment in itself © Getty Images

Having spent many summers talking tactics and philosophies with him while he coached Sussex, Peter Moores, in my experience, is an exceedingly bright, hard-working, fair-minded man, a chap of principle. Which made it all the more surprising to hear him infer that it might be better for all concerned if stump mics were terminated with extreme prejudice, the better, presumably, to permit the players get on with their yakkety-yakking without fear of being rumbled.

As for the jelly beans, Moores managed to dig himself an even deeper hole. "Nobody would argue that a couple of lads put a couple of jellybeans down there. It was meant to be a joke and now looks a bit silly. I think people will try and read things into it, but it has no meaning whatsoever."

No meaning whatsoever? I’d contest that with some vehemence. The meaning was abundantly clear: in the interests of mental disintegration, we are prepared to stoop to anything, even pathetic schoolboy pranks. That the “tactic” appeared to galvanise Zaheer Khan, however, should be seen as punishment in itself. If you’re going to stoop that low, the inherent risks must be acknowledged, as they surely are with all forms of sledging. How can you NOT know that such a gambit might inspire rather than disrupt or deflate? But let’s not confuse the pros and cons of all this with ethics. Just because you find something daft, ludicrous or even perverse should not be grounds for moral objection.

International cricketers are unluckier than most sportsmen. There is no scrum mic to catch front-rowers gnawing at each other’s ears or whispering sour nothings; no penalty-box mic to pick up the pleasantries centre-halves hurl at centre-forwards; no saddle-mic to nab jockeys abusing rivals or even horses. Would Muhammad Ali be quite so universally adored had there been a clinch mic to broadcast his taunting of Ernie Terrell or Floyd Patterson? Only tennis is as exposed as cricket.

To pretend that sledging is a recent phenomenon, a product of increasingly filthy amounts of lucre, is a bit like suggesting the Victorians had such upstanding values that they conceived their babies without recourse to intercourse. WG Grace was no less a master of verbal abuse than Steve Waugh. Any Yorkshireman with his eyes on a professional career had to know how to get under an opponent’s skin. Club cricketers of my experience have always sought to gain an edge by throwing insults, most of them sexual and crass. And they play for fun, not a living.

Earlier this summer, Alex Rodriguez, who signed the heftiest contract in any team sport when he joined the New York Yankees a few years back, incited even more hostility than usual when a TV microphone caught him calling out the baseball equivalent of “Mine” while rounding the bases, the aim brazen: to deceive the fielder as he settled under a catch. Emails to ESPN appeared to be evenly divided between those who believed that there was no place in the game for such shameless gamesmanship, and those who shrugged their shoulders. It wasn’t as if such incidents were unusual, ran the latter argument. It was a familiar divide.

Cricket still has behavioural standards that other team sports envy. In individual sports such as golf, that purported bastion of dignity and decency, hypocrisy and cheating are far more evident than the likes of Peter “Jolly Fine Shot” Alliss and Co would ever have you believe. Yet stamping out verbal self-expression in the heat of battle would be doubly unfortunate.

For one thing, it would deprive the majority of spectators (ie those in armchairs and propping up bars) of smelling and tasting a physical battle designed to involve no physical contact. Spectator sport, after all, must provide theatre if it is to have any value. In addition, suppression would, in all probability, diminish a player’s concentration and hence effectiveness. Do we really want to see neutered batsmen and bowlers pursing their lips and making like statues?

If we agree that Test cricket is currently as vibrant as it has ever been – and everyone I speak to feels just that – is that not in part because of the comparative evenness of standards (the six sides in the ICC Test table between Australia and West Indies are separated by wafers rather than gulfs; World Cups are generally open affairs)? This evenness heightens competitiveness, of which sledging is an inevitable symptom. Besides, what was that old saw about sticks and stones?

The game may no longer be the paragon the unblinkered would say it never was, but it’s still nowhere as bad as it once appeared destined to become. Lest we forget, for all Sreesanth’s dainty shoulder-to-shoulder effort against Michael Vaughan at Trent Bridge, cricket in the Burnout Era has produced nothing as low as Colin Croft’s barging of a New Zealand umpire, nothing as reprehensible as Javed Miandad threatening to decapitate Dennis Lillee, much less Trevor Chappell’s grubber to Brian McKechnie. All those incidents took place a quarter of a century or more ago.

None of this is to decry the so-called “Spirit of Cricket”, merely to apply some much-needed proportion. The MCC probably won’t concur, but sledging is as much a part of that “spirit” as walking, embedded as it is in both history and grassroots. Cricketers may be better behaved than most sportsmen but that doesn’t mean they don’t behave badly, have always behaved badly. Where, pray, would cricket folklore be (let alone the cricket book business and after-dinner circuit) without the witticisms handed down through the generations? Provided the abuse is not racist, shouldn’t players be big enough and ugly enough to look after themselves?

If you happen to be one of those who sincerely believe that the players are/should be servants of the “gentleman’s game”, may I respectfully suggest that you are probably a rate-payer in cloud-cuckoo land. If it was a game confined to gentlemen, what does it say about it that so many of its greatest exponents, Lillee, Miandad, Waugh, Fred Trueman, Shane Warne, Ian Chappell and countless others, have been onfield blackguards? Would the game, our culture, our lives, really have been better off without them?

Cricket, especially at the highest level, demands more of its participants than just about any other sport I can think of, and the reason for that is the fact that it takes so damn long to play a match. At a time in their lives when patience and self-discipline can be so elusive, we expect players to endure hour upon fruitless hour going against age and nature, stifling the impatience and selfishness of youth. For the most part, they somehow manage to do so. When they fail, can we not tolerate and forgive them as we tolerate and forgive our children?