Origin
According to Ian Chappell, the use of "sledging" as a term originated at Adelaide Oval in either the 1963–1964 or 1964–1965 Sheffield Shield competition. Chappell claims that a cricketer who swore in the presence of a woman was said to have reacted to an incident "like a sledgehammer". As a result, the direction of insults or obscenities at opponents became known as "sledging". Despite the relatively recent coining of the term, the practice is as old as cricket itself, with historical accounts of witty banter between players being quite common.
According to the BBC’s Pat Murphy: “My understanding is that it came from the mid-sixties and a guy called Graham Corling, who used to open the bowling for New South Wales and Australia … apparently the suggestion was that this guy’s wife was with another team-mate, and when he came into bat started singing When a Man Loves A Woman, the old Percy Sledge number.”
Some Jewish cricketers have been subjected to anti-semitic sledging during some of their games, notably Julien Wiener and Bev Lyon.
Read more about this topic: Sledging (cricket)
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