Is it time to legalize sledging in cricket?

We all enjoy that odd incident of exchange of words between players on a cricket field which players themselves like to call ‘friendly banter’ or ‘chit-chat’. Of course it‘s more ubiquitous in this day and age than ever before, as is evident from the recent David Warner incident but the existence of sledging in cricket dates back to the 50s and 60s. Sledging is something that fans have always found enjoyable but there has always been a question mark in the cricketing fraternity over the very presence of it. Should betting be legalized is a dilemma in itself. Sunil Gavaskar has always reiterated the fact that he never enjoyed the path of sledging that the Aussies followed while touring Australia in the 80s and cricket is best played in a clean manner where the bat should be employed to so most of the talking while for the Australians and the Englishmen, sledging forms an innate part of the game, which spices up things and gets them charged up for a challenge. In more recent times, Muttiah Muralidharan had issues with sledging down under as well, while someone like Freddie Flintoff made the most of this frustration that arises in some players, which leads to further mental disintegration and in turn benefits the opponent. Sledging has also had an intellectual side to it with players coming up with the wittiest of quotes at times, none better than the conversation between Mark Waugh and an average English county cricketer in a county match. When the Englishman came into bat, Waugh standing in the slips uttered something like, ‘’You are getting older and still nowhere near one of the better players in the country to make into the English national side’’, while the batsman replied,  ‘’At least I am the best player in my family’’. Such an incident can never be forgotten because of the wit associated with it and the impact it can create on a player’s mind, who in this case was the great Mark Waugh.
Sledging definitely has an ugly side to it, with players known to have exceeded their limits on numerous occasions in the past. The spat between Glenn Mcgrath and Ramnaresh Sarwan in the West Indies’ tour down under in 1999 was an example of sledging employed by the Australian team converting into a personal dwell between the two players. A recent example can be of the nasty spat between Shane Warne and Marlon Samuels in a bigbash encounter in Australia with ended up getting very vocal with abuses and finger pointing. One thing common between most of those encounters is the presence of Australia, who as Gavaskar says, like to give it but do not enjoy it at all when someone gives it back to them. Sledging has also gotten very personal and directed towards a player’s family members including wives or ailing mothers, and targeting some mental or physical illness that the player would be going through. These are situations which no one in the world would enjoy when directed towards him and also not from a neutral point of view. Therefore, if sledging is legalized then it would give players the freedom to not only just target the weak links of players to inflict a dismissal but also the license to utter very personal statements about players which could end up being very vocal and nasty as well as the frequency of such incidents might increase enormously, which would definitely have a negative impact on the spirit of the game which none of us want. So, I don’t think Cricket will ever need betting to be made legalized to propel itself. The gentleman’s game as it is famously referred to, is best the way it is.