The phrase "it's not cricket" has come to mean more than just poor behaviour on a playing field.
It is applied to any course of action deemed to be unworthy and ungentlemanly.
Cricket, for the most part, has been played for two centuries in a good spirit. But even this beloved and graceful game has had its moments of controversy.
And because of the game's chivalrous reputation these events have stayed in the memory far longer than the tiresome tantrums so prevalent in other sports.
Perhaps the biggest row to engulf cricket came in England's tour to Australia in 1932-33.
In what became known as the Bodyline tour, England's captain, a dour, Aussie-hating Scot Douglas Jardine, devised a plan to halt the serene progress of the game's greatest-ever batsman Don Bradman.
Jardine instructed his fast bowlers Harold Larwood, Bill Voce and Gubby Allen (who refused) to bowl at the batsman with a packed leg-side field ready to catch the fend-offs the batsman was forced to play.
The tactics caused uproar. Australian batsmen were hit, crowds threatened to invade pitches, Bradman's average sank from around 100 to 56, and Australia talked of breaking off diplomatic relations with England.
England won the series and the Ashes by four matches to one. But Jardine never played against the Australians again and rules were changed to prevent his Bodyline field placings being replicated.
It was another Ashes series - in 1958-59 - that led to the throwing controversy that scarred the early 1960s. England said nothing at the time but were convinced that some of the Australians - but mainly fast bowler Ian Meckiff - were chuckers.
Less inhibited then by political correctness or lawyers, cricket administrators were determined to stamp out chucking and Meckiff and an unfortunate South African called Geoff Griffin were called by umpires for throwing and, together with others, were effectively kicked out of the game.
The other great controversy of the 1960s was the 1968 D'Oliveira Affair, when South African politicians opposed the presence of a Cape-coloured Basil D'Oliveira in the England team to tour South Africa.
England refused to change the team, the tour was called off and the subsequent South Africa tour to England in 1970 was axed by the UK Government after anti-apartheid demonstrators, with the current Labour minister Peter Hain to the fore, threatened to disrupt matches.
Meanwhile, Pakistan-England relations had been simmering for some time.
Pakistan had had issues with English umpiring and matters came to a head in 1987 when Pakistani umpire Shakoor Rana accused England captain Mike Gatting of cheating in a row over field placings in an England-Pakistan Test in Faisalabad.
A whole day's play was lost and Gatting ended up sending the umpire a misspelt apology on a scrap of paper.
