"The whole irony and tragedy of this particular story is law 42.3," he told the Guardian newspaper. "But law 42.3 is 'a rubbish'. It was brought in because of ball-tampering with razor blades and bottle tops and everything else in the past, but that's been shoved out of the game now. I'd scrub out the law completely."

Woolmer backed his players and insisted that they had done nothing illegal at The Oval, adding that he'd held these views earlier as well. "I'd allow bowlers to use anything that naturally appears on the cricket field," Woolmer continued.

"They could rub the ball on the ground, pick the seam, scratch it with their nails -- anything that allows the ball to move off the seam to make it less of a batsman's game.

"It should be looked at seriously by the Marylebone Cricket Club's laws committee. Every single bowler I know from the time I played in 1968 to 1984 was guilty, at least under the current law, of some sort of ball-changing. If you haven't played the game, like a lot of the umpires haven't, they don't know these things. The more laws you make to try to stop it being done, the more the players go the other way. It's like prohibition: the more you ban alcohol, the more it goes underground. They really need to open it up in my opinion."