Historically, Australia have taken great pride in ‘playing hard but playing fair’. They have followed their own set of rules, smug in the (mistaken?) belief that there is very little they can do wrong because of their high values; moral turpitude is a phrase that doesn’t exist in the Australian cricketing lexicon, though when they can, they have bent the rules — such as Trevor Chappell’s infamous underarm in the finals of the triangular series against New Zealand in 1981 that forced the laws of the game to be tweaked.

In Australia, and then captain Greg Chappell’s defence — it was at his older brother’s insistence that Trevor delivered the underarm which would be a slur against his name for the rest of his cricketing career and beyond — underarm was a legitimate mode of delivery at the time. Greg, one of the greatest batters of all time and later to be part of a tumultuous 22-month ride as India’s head coach, has outlined numerous times in the last 45 years his disillusionment with the establishment and the unwelcome prospect of a potentially third and decisive final against the Kiwis as the primary reasons behind the underarm to Brian McKechnie with the visitors needing six off the last ball just to tie the game.

Clearly, the Kiwis weren’t the only ones who were outraged that Chappell, and by extension the Aussies — though several senior players within the playing XI weren’t too amused by the underarm — had used a sneaky if perfectly legitimate (at the time) method in the best interests of the team. The rewriting of the Laws of the Game to ban underarm bowling was a direct offshoot of Trevor’s Greg-induced act, and while the underarm didn’t spark the same reverberations around the cricket world as Douglas Jardine’s ‘Bodyline’ aimed at curbing Don Bradman’s prolificity, it will remain one of the darker chapters in world cricket.