Australia's Michael Clarke and England's James Anderson exchange words. Getty Images

Cricket, a sport so genteel that white sweaters are part of the uniform and the players break for tea, has a dirty little secret. It is called sledging—which is just a fancy word for the most vicious trash talk in sports.

For the most part, it is quietly tolerated. But as England and Australia begin the second Test of the five-game Ashes series, a 131-year-old grudge match, the question of just how much ego-bruising is OK has made headlines in both countries for over a week.

The current sledging kerfuffle arose during the first Test on Nov. 24, won by Australia, when a TV microphone picked up Australian captain Michael Clarke telling England's Jimmy Anderson to "get ready for a broken arm." (With an expletive thrown in.) The incident was broadcast live; Clarke was fined 20% of his match fee, a sum believed to be a few thousand dollars.

Adding a more serious dimension to the affair was the decision of one England player, Jonathan Trott, to leave the tour with what he called a stress-related illness after Australia made him a specific trash-talking target. Australia apologized for the Trott incident, but players said they had no plans to ease up against the fragile England side in the second Test, which began Wednesday night.

"I think anyone who says they've never been affected by sledging is lying," England captain Alastair Cook said.

Cricket's less-than-gentlemanly inclinations come in several forms. Ball-tampering, given far more leeway than in baseball, is the sport's great gray area. Match-fixing has at various points infiltrated the highest level. And bodyline bowling, the once-maligned practice of aiming balls straight at batsmen's bodies and hoping for deflections, is now common practice.

So when it comes to sledging, most players and officials are happy to pretend it isn't there.

"The two countries know each other well enough not to be offended," said Lawrence Booth, the editor of cricket's once-a-year bible, the Wisden Almanack. "They know that they'd do the same." Australia is especially anxious to reclaim the Ashes at home after losing the last three series.

Fundamentally, sledging is the dominion of fast bowlers. This is because, just like in baseball, the guys who throw the ball hardest are the ones who can inflict the most pain. Strategies to combat sledging consist of witty, cutting retorts, an old-fashioned glare, or—slightly more difficult—crushing the next ball into the stands.

"It's always been the way with bowlers and some teams down the years to try and intimidate a batsman," England batting coach Graham Gooch said. "It's just, that's part of the game and you have to accept that."

This rivalry and venomous sledging have been linked since the early 1970s, when Australia was fighting to snatch back the Ashes. The bushy-mustached men on those Australian teams didn't fit anyone's description of a traditional cricket-playing gent. They wore their shirts wide open at the collar, exposing hairy chests and dangling medallions.

"They regarded themselves as men's men, and part of that was intimidating the opposition," Booth said. "It was almost a sign of their machismo that they could come up with the most vulgar insults."

Most examples are too crass for a family newspaper. They trade in the usual trash-talking currency of insulting relatives—"How's your wife and my kids?" goes one infamous Ashes sledge—poking fun at weight, and expletive-laden comments to the effect of "You're bad at cricket."

Psychological warfare is better suited to cricket than a lot of sports. A batsman may be up for several hours at a time, but can be sent packing for a single sloppy swing. Anything that breaks his concentration, even momentarily, can make a huge difference.

And yet, officials rarely take action against players for breaching the spirit of the game or, as the laws of the game state, "generally behaving in a manner which might bring the game into disrepute." The responsibility lies more with the two captains, who are responsible for their teammates' conduct.

On Wednesday, Cook said he thought the sledging had gone "a little bit over the top at times" in the first Test in Brisbane and hoped there wouldn't be a repeat during the second Test in Adelaide. Australia has made no such promises.

Still, Booth said, there is an understanding. England and Australia are "two countries that are very far apart, but very close in some ways. They both like a drink and they swear a lot."

Write to Joshua Robinson at