Doug Insole was in Abu Dhabi this week. He is getting on for 86 and still sharp as a tack. Cricket people know him more as an administrator, the last great panjandrum of English cricket. But he was chosen for nine Test matches and on the afternoon of 1 June 1957, in the second innings of the first Test, at Edgbaston, was to play what was to prove his final innings. He made a two-ball duck. If it was a significant dismissal for Insole, then it proved equally significant for the game in general.

Given recent events, this may sound familiar, but in the first innings of that match, in excellent conditions, England had been dismissed for 186. "Seldom," Wisden noted, "can England have given such a disappointing exhibition on a perfect pitch." A mystery spinner, who bowled with his sleeves down and made the ball spin both ways with a flick of the wrist had taken seven for 49, the best of his career. Once more, Sonny Ramadhin of West Indies had bamboozled England. When he neck-and-cropped Insole to leave England 65 for two in the second innings, a deficit still of 223, it was his ninth wicket of the game. He was not to take another in the match, only five more in the remaining four Tests of the summer, and only a further 38 in the last three years of his international career.

What followed changed batsmanship for decades, and not for the better. A third cheap England wicket fell early after the rest day and Colin Cowdrey joined the England captain Peter May. Together they added 411, still the highest partnership for England, before Cowdrey was out for 154. May made an unbeaten 285. In the process, the two batsmen broke Ramadhin's heart. Once, batting was done with the bat. The pair changed that.

If Ramadhin pitched the ball up, they smothered it or drove. If it was short of driving length, they simply stuck bat behind pad and hoofed it away. Ramadhin shouted himself hoarse but Charlie Elliott and Emrys Davies, bound by an archaic lbw law that permitted such things, gave him nothing. No one in the history of Test cricket has bowled more overs in an innings than the 98 he sent down, and all of them fruitless since his early success against Insole.

More than half a century on and the worm has turned. Legislation was late coming, but eventually bowlers were given some protection by a change to the lbw law that allowed for a batsman to be out if struck outside the line providing they were not playing a stroke. Success was partial: pad play simply became an art form, an act of pretence. Umpires were reluctant to guess the flightpath of a sharply turning delivery, despite corroborative evidence when a batsman missed and was bowled. The advent of neutral umpires, an initiative largely credited to Pakistan's insistence, had an impact, particularly on the subcontinent where stellar batsmen were said to have virtual lbw immunity.

Then came the technological breakthrough on television. Tracking devices such as Hawk-Eye demonstrated that umpires were overcautious in many lbw determinations, where front-foot decisions were all but taboo. At the same time, the ICC began to assemble its elite panel of international umpires, and armed with the evidence of such technology, used at their seminars and tutorials, they gradually became convinced that such extreme caution was unwarranted and that particularly against spin, batsmen were being given undue protection.

Finally, though, came the introduction of the umpire decision review system whereby their judgment could be backed up formally using the technology. The dam burst. Where spinners had once been neutered, they suddenly became beneficiaries of umpiring and technological benevolence. Lbw decisions that were once regarded as unfeasible have become the norm. With the current parameters operating on the "umpire's call" part of UDRS it might even have gone too far the other way now.

The percentage of wickets falling to spinners which are lbw has risen steadily from 16.04% in 2004 to almost 24% in 2009 when UDRS was first used, and just short of 23% last year. Of 82 wickets gained by spinners already this year, 38 (46%) have been lbw. Contingent on the conditions, of course, but in the two Tests of this series, 50 of 70 wickets have been to spin, 26 of them lbw.

UDRS has changed the bowling strategy. Where once spinners bowled for close catches, they now aim for the pads as the primary target and batsmen, used to prodding out a defensive pad, have been flummoxed. Fifty of Graeme Swann's 162 wickets are lbw, 32 of them left-handers: Fred Titmus took 153, with 23 lbw, all but two right-handers. Monty Panesar's 133 wickets include 33 lbw, 30 of them right-handers: of Hedley Verity's 144 wickets, only 18 were lbw. Imagine, then, how the course of cricket history might have been changed if UDRS had been in place 55 years ago. Sonny Ramadhin, 82 years old now, must sit at home in Lancashire and weep.