LONDON — Among the traditionalists in candy-striped blazers at the venerable Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, the sport is often viewed through the prism of ideals espoused by the upper-crust Victorians who set the game’s rules 150 years ago. Players were expected to behave at all times, win or lose, as gentlemen, and never allow their stiff-upper-lip resolve to falter.

Such expectations are never higher than in test (international) cricket, the most prestigious form of the game. The biggest tests are played between nations of the old empire like England and Australia, five-day contests that end, as the ideal requires it, with handshakes all around.

But these traditions have been deeply eroded in recent decades as cricket has become a global television draw, with multimillionaire players, sharp-edged gamesmanship and occasional doping and match-fixing scandals. With that has come heightened animosity among top players, including sledging, a term coined in Australia to describe the cult of on-field insults among rival players, often woundingly personal, that are aimed at unsettling opponents.

The pressure, the money, the trash talk, the travel, the threat of injury, the worries about life after cricket and many other factors — all seem to have contributed to a high incidence of top players having psychological breakdowns. And in some cases, suicide.