SHUTTING THE STABLE DOOR...

While the Old Trafford Twenty-20 international abandonment fiasco was unfolding before our very eyes a few weeks ago, Shane Warne, the Aussie leg-spinning legend, sent a brief message to Sky Sports commentary colleagues, saying: "Let's bowl from only one end!"
This would have got over the problem of a slippery patch near the square which resulted in the umpires calling off the game, on safety grounds, with the full agreement of the captains of Australia and England.
David "Bumble" Lloyd described it as a disaster for cricket and his beloved county club, as TV viewers watched bemused fans heading out of the ground. Lancashire CCC spokesman Jim Cumbes felt the game could, and should, have gone ahead - despite the damp patch.
Yet no-one on the night acted on Warne's brilliant suggestion.
Today's sports pages, however, contain brief reference to the authorities who run the game now concluding it would be a good idea to get two strips ready for a Twenty-20 international (just in case there's a problem with surface water), and that bowling from one end should be allowed, if it means getting things under way.
Now who's paid to govern our game and come up with solutions?
Not Shane Warne - you are unlikely to see him donning a suit and taking charge when the going gets tough.
Yet he came up with the solution in a quick text message, while others (on the night), hands tied by red tape regulations and playing conditions, did not.
It's all too late now, of course. The damage to cricket as a spectator sport was done that night in Manchester - after which, as Messrs Cumbes and Lloyd rightly pointed out, people who had paid a lot of money to watch international cricket for the first time will probably never do so again.
This official ruling - very welcome as it is - is very much a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. We needed someone in authority on the night just to say to both teams: "OK, it's not strictly in the rules - but let's give bowling from one end a try!"
This reminds me of a game about this time of year some 20 years ago when my own club's first team needed to win its final home game of the season to clinch the South Humberside Alliance division one championship ahead of Grimsby team SCM.
Having bowled out visiting South Kelsey 2nds for 90-odd, we watched in horror at tea as a thunderstorm deposited masses of water on the Brigg Sugar Factory square. Unsurprisingly the playing strip was not draining very well at all - due to the amount of top dressing applied and rolling carried out.
But umpire ex-Minor Counties umpire John Harrison - standing alone - merely inquired of the groundsman: "Could you cut another strip out on the far end of the square?"
No-one realised that was in order - but that's what we did, the game resumed on the second strip without too much further delay, and we inched home by a couple of wickets to lift the trophy.
I applied what we might call The Harrison Solution myself while umpiring a North Lindsey cup-tie in Gainsborough a year or two back. But although that got play under way, both teams insisted on playing more overs than seemed sensible to us, given the weather forecast, and the 'semi' eventually had to be abandoned, then replayed.