Ashes Needs Verbal Battle But Please... Keep It Clean

Derek Pringle says let the sledging begin Down Under, as long as it’s kept within the bounds of humour and quick wit

- Derek Pringle

So David Warner wants to ramp up the sledging in the forthcoming Ashes series. Good luck. Given the International Cricket Council’s purge on all things risque, I hope he brings his credit card as it could get very expensive.

To be fair, Warner, Australia’s vice-captain, has recognised that the ICC has launched a purge on such matters. To remedy that, he is asking for leniency to be applied during the Ashes series so it can be “More like State of Origin”, Australia’s rugby league competition that pits New South Wales against Queensland.

Now I have never watched a rugby league match in Australia, but I’d be amazed if the players have much breath for slagging each other off, so I find the comparison confusing. Yet I share Warner’s concern, to a point, that Test cricket is being made anti-septic and squeaky clean just when it needs all the street credit can get.

Sledging, mental disintegration, intimidation, banter, whatever label you want to attach, it has been part of cricket’s history since Victorian times. The ICC’s determination to rid the game of this verbal element is driven not by the players, who mostly accept a certain level of abuse on the field, but by a politically correct prissiness borne of those who want to see full-on drama but not the unseemly bits.

It is a bit like the dichotomy surrounding Ben Stokes. Those same people want the combative, highly charged all-rounder they see on the cricket field without the brawler, not realising that what drives one is likely to be largely present in the other. It is the Faustian pact that sometimes has to be made to get genuine, or as the Aussies say ‘fair dinkum,’ competition.