In the August edition of Wisden Cricket Monthly leading writers were asked to give their opinion on sledging. Alan Lee opens the debate You hear them everywhere, the apologists who declaim that it is nothing but a spot of banter and that it's always been the same. But is it, and has it? Think back 20 years and ask yourself if school fixtures or bucolic games on the village green were being poisoned by the cancerous habit of sledging.

Why has the regrettable compulsion of professional players, spread like a nasty rash among the young and innocent? Simple – television. TV now dictates the way most sport is played and then transmits it. Nothing is missed by the cameras, and precious little by the microphones. Just like the shirt-tugging and professional fouling that been have passed on to the next generation by our leading footballers, sledging is endemic in cricket at all levels from infant to incompetent.

Because it looks big and brave to stand in mid-pitch and give the batsman a mouthful of expletives, every 2nd XI club bowler on a Saturday afternoon sets out to behave like Glenn McGrath. This means that cricket at lower levels is being corrupted by hostility, and is driving many away from village and club cricket which used to be a treasured part of England's social canvas. Worse still, the youngest of cricketers are learning to ape the stars' most unpleasant habits, and few at schools level seem to be telling them it is wrong.

Umpires have become compliant observers, either not recognising the malaise or feeling they have no power to halt it. So issue yellow and red cards and encourage their use for any detected sledging. At the top level, use TV's pitch microphones against the habit, rather than in praise of it. Fine the miscreants, or ban them if necessary, for the complacency at top level has to end if the moral and social collapse of lower levels is ever to be reversed.

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