Glamorgan's third consecutive County Championship loss has been somewhat overshadowed by the 'ball tampering' furore which has erupted in its aftermath.

For coach John Derrick to be so irate about an issue means that it is a serious one. Derrick is so naturally mild-mannered and easy-going that we must stand up and take notice when he complains about something like this.

It is alleged he saw Gloucestershire's Steve Kirby tampering with the ball in the Sophia Gardens car park while retrieving a six hit by David Hemp.

So incensed was Derrick that he then stormed on to the field to remonstrate with the umpires, John Hampshire and Nigel Cowley. I can never recall seeing that happen before in any first class match in which I have been involved.

The matter has now been referred to the England and Wales Cricket Board but I am doubtful that much will come of it, just as Iam sceptical as to what action Surrey may take over their incident of ball-tampering last week in their match against Nottinghamshire.

Glamorgan's case may well come down to Derrick's word against Kirby's, unless other reliable witnesses can be found to testify that Kirby was indeed scraping the ball against the concrete, as alleged.

Surrey have already made big promises of strong action against the person who tampered with the quarter seam in their match, not just once but again after an official warning from the umpires. The problem is finding the miscreant.

Cricketers are like guilty schoolchildren in this respect and are loathe to own up, so I think we may find a depressing stand-off, although a rather unfortunate victim might be stand-in skipper Mark Ramprakash who could be held liable if none of his team- mates owns up.

This whole ball-tampering business is rather embarrassing for me because only two weeks ago I stated in my national newspaper column that I did not think that there was a serious problem with it in county cricket.

Perversely enough, I still believe that, because I consider these isolated incidents, as ever blown up by the media.

Ball-tampering of some sort or another has gone on since the game was invented but has now become a big issue, even though it does not seem very different from, say, a batsman not walking when he knows that he has edged the ball, or a fielder claiming a catch when he knows that the batsman has not hit the ball.

In every sport players will strive for that extra edge, often by fair means or foul.

However, they all know the consequences of such action, and that is why it is important that sufficient penalties are administered to deter those who err.

Back to Glamorgan's awful start to the season. It has already been written ad nauseum that this represents their worst start to a championship season since 1922, one in which they went on to lose their first twelve matches.

However, they did lose their first three first class matches in 1947, but the last of those was against South Africa.

I think this statistic is very harsh on the current team - they are nowhere near as bad as many of the Glamorgan teams down the years.

If you think about that statistic, most of the matches in the past were three-day affairs and it would not take too much bad weather, especially in early season, to mean a game was a draw. So we should not get too depressed, though we cannot escape the fact that Glamorgan are struggling.

They will not have been helped either by the late withdrawal this week of Matthew Elliott from the starting line-up at the Oval. At least that allowed them to field their first all-Welsh-reared X1 since 1960.

That is a fine achievement but when you are sitting at the bottom of the table it begs the question of whether it is the best policy. I believe that it is.

It is just that events have conspired against Glamorgan with the unfortunate absences of Matthew Maynard and Simon Jones and now Alex Wharf and Elliott.

The second overseas player situation has already been talked about too much and we may know more about that next week after a management board meeting at Sophia Gardens.

But for now it is up to these home-grown youngsters to stick their hands up and perform.

My heart goes out to Jonathan Hughes, who has scored three consecutive noughts in his last four knocks, with just a single run in the last one. I spoke to him this week and told him I'd once had three on the trot, but further investigation told me it was in fact three in four, but nonetheless I know how he feels.

I had two pairs in my career (once bagging them in a day at Luton in 1992) and countless times I scored 0 & 1 in a match - these things can happen to a batsman. His last innings was ended with a wicked grubber - that is exactly what happens when you are in bad form.

The whole world seems to be against you and you have to be strong enough to fight back. Not only Hughes, but the whole of the Glamorgan team need to do that over the next couple of weeks.