India's impressive performance in the ongoing Champions Trophy must come as a welcome relief to the BCCI. Given the Indian cricket fan's notoriously short memory, a victory in this tournament is all that's needed to banish the nightmare of the spot-fixing scandal.

But this post is not about India's performance but about the long forgotten ball tampering issue that reared its head in this tournament. The English bowlers were alleged to have indulged in tampering with the ball given the prodigious reverse swing they were getting.

Matters came to a head when English fast-bowling legend Bob Willis accused the English bowlers of tampering with the ball. Of course this charge was met with a vehement denial by the English bowling coach Ashley Giles.

This incident brought back memories of a discussion that a couple of friends of mine and I had over a drink on this issue way back in the halcyon days of 1990s. The issue was a hot topic then in the world of cricket which even prompted the ICC to bring some rule changes.

Two of us, which included me, argued that one shouldn't get too worked up over the issue. Given how batsmen-oriented the game had become — flatter pitches, fielding restrictions, bouncer restrictions, etc — if the bowlers got some advantage by scratching the surface or scuffing the seam, one shouldn't grudge them that as this would only 'level the playing field'. But our third friend, who's now based in Delhi as a senior editor in a magazine, would have none of it and argued vehemently that tampering with the ball was against the spirit of the game and amounted to cheating. Like most other debates in life this one too ended unresolved — in a draw.

Though ball tampering is as old as the game itself, the issue came to the limelight in Pakistan's tour to England in the summer of 1992. Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis were ripping through the English batting line-up that summer, prompting the English to accuse the Pakistanis of tampering with the ball. The chief accusers then were Ian Botham and Alan Lamb. There were also dark whispers of another Pakistani legend Imran Khan having indulged in the practice in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Not surprisingly the Pakistanis rejected the charge. But in a one-day match at Lords, the umpires asked the ball to be changed when Pakistan was bowling.

More recently in the 2006 Oval test between England and Pakistan, the Australian umpire charged Pakistan with tampering with the ball, provoking a furious backlash from Pakistan.

So enraged was the Pakistani team that it refused to come out after the tea break, forfeiting the match instead. Over the years Mike Atherton, and our very own Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid were charged with tampering the ball, however, they were let off with minor fines.

My solution to this vexatious issue is to make certain forms of 'tampering' legal, just the way the 15 degrees rule was brought in to make actions of some bowlers legal. The umpires should be empowered with this task and if the bowling side wants the ball to be 'tampered' with, the captain can request the umpire to either scruff one side or pick the seam and show the ball to the batsmen so that they know what's in store for them!

This should surely put an end to this debate and prevent some teams from taking a needlessly 'holier than thou' attitude.

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