After two decades as a professional during which time he has seen and done most things, it must take something to embarrass Chris Adams on a cricket field.

But it happened on Sunday at Taunton when Adams became the first player to question an umpire's decision as part of the referral experiment being piloted in the Friends Provident Trophy.

"I found it a very difficult position to be in, questioning umpires' decisions," he admitted afterwards. "It goes against the grain when you are brought up to respect the laws of the game."

Adams' referral was turned down by the third umpire Barrie Leadbeater and so were two subsequent appeals' later in the game. Not surprisingly perhaps, one of them was made by Mushtaq Ahmed. After the shambolic World Cup they have just overseen, anything which has the backing of the International Cricket Council must be viewed suspiciously.

But this experiment is flawed and I would be amazed if it goes any further than the televised games it is being trialed in during this season's FP Trophy.

The players are uncomfortable with it and no umpire is going to over-rule a colleague on something like a leg-before decision. If a player obviously hits the ball into his pad first that might be different. But English umpires are rightly regarded as the best in the business and are not going to miss something as blatant as that. The most obvious problem is that it only applies to televised games.

Imagine the scenario. It's semi-final day and one of the matches is on Sky and the other is not. In the televised game the third umpire over-rules the on-field umpire and a player is reprieved after getting a big inside edge and goes on to score a match-winning century.

In the game which is not on the box, exactly the same thing happens but the on-field umpire decides that the player is out. Is that fair?

With a bit of luck the experiment will be quietly shelved at the end of the season. The players and umpires are sceptical and the Somerset crowd started a slow hand-clap when Leadbeater - through no fault of his own - took more than two minutes to make his decision known on Sunday.