In 2016, the Australian men’s cricket team was on an ODI tour of South Africa, “getting our arses handed to us”, as described by one player. Coach Darren Lehmann called a meeting, inviting senior players to present their ideas on how the team should play. George Bailey stood up, and suggested the team focus on individual improvement and on beating opponents with skill.

It was not the answer Lehmann was after. Matthew Wade was then invited to speak. He said Australia needed to get themselves into the contest verbally, and to get in South Africa’s face. Lehmann liked it. So did many support staff. Bailey disagreed, saying verbal aggression didn’t suit the players’ personalities. It was the beginning of the end for Bailey; he would be dropped eight weeks later.

Australia lost that series 5-0. As with Bailey, it may have been the beginning of the end for Australia’s hawkish kingdom of old-school alphas, too. As history records, subsequent events in Cape Town caused the regime’s root and branch collapse, and with it the quasi-doctrine of “winning at all costs”.

Gore Vidal wrote: “Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to bring the truth back.” So it is with Australian cricket. It’s not sexy to say, and nor will many believe it, but from the suburbs to the SCG, Australian cricket has many George Baileys – decent, principled people, with a sense of cricketing custodianship. They hover at the international level too, quietly attempting change by example. But for the past few decades, Australia’s image has been defined by a louder, more aggressive, peacocking machismo style. Until recently, its peak body amplified and revelled in it, but it wasn’t representative of Australian cricket’s body politic.

Stereotypes endure, especially when they’re self-fashioned. The men’s team is now in England for four months, and though Justin Langer tells Guardian Australia “we’ve got the nicest kids in this Australian side you’ve ever met – they’re absolute rippers”, they will be subject to a UK public and press whose voices, pens, microphones, and sandpaper sales will look to manufacture greater carnage than England’s own World Cup top order.

We’ve recognised that a mistake was made. We’re working our backsides off every day to rectify it Tim Paine, Test captain

The BBC has already published a parody song to the tune of Don McLean’s American Pie, titled The Australian Lie, and the Barmy Army has claimed to have written nine songs on the same topic. The first Test is in August, and it’s only the beginning of June. Sterner questions about the fullness of Australia’s handling of Cape Town also awaits, understandably so. As notional arbiters of cricketing civility, England gleefully anticipates the opportunity to inflict its judgment wholesale – earnest, righteous, banterous, or otherwise – face-to-face.

The perceived ugliness of the Australian character will sit at its root. New CA chairman Earl Eddings accepts that the reception will be “quite hostile”, but he adds: “We were the ones that put ourselves in this situation.”

“It won’t happen again,” says Australian Test captain Tim Paine. “We’ve recognised that a mistake was made. We’re working our backsides off every day to rectify it.”

Yet is it possible to rectify in England? To many, Australian cricketers at all levels have an evolved reflex to the unethical edge. In a recent piece published in ESPN Cricket Monthly, Australian author Jarrod Kimber asked: “How did Australian cricket come to be synonymous with hostility, gamesmanship and verbal abuse?” He describes a certain abrasiveness that Australians “are born into”; a brand of toxicity that started somewhere in the 70s, which – according to Kimber – is now deeply rooted across the country, transferred across generations, from park cricket to the professional level, from cradle to grave. It’s not how we always were, but now, it’s how we are.

It’s a thesis that recognises the influence of society on behaviour, which, surprisingly, shares similarities with the view of CA chief executive Kevin Roberts. Speaking about the history and evolution of Australian on-field behaviour, Roberts tells of the need to be careful before judging past behaviour through the lens of the present. “Community expectations have changed,” he says. “Twenty years ago, for example, there would have been an approach of ‘Oh push on, you’ll be right, dig deep, harden up’, whatever the term might be, which demonstrated a lack of understanding and a lack of education around something like mental health and wellbeing. Today, there’s a much more well-informed and respectful approach to that.”

But before you can treat a problem, you have to understand it. Before the 70s, the Australians were regarded as polite and amiable. As one former Test player says: “When I hear all of this sledging and carrying on and hostility – that it’s ‘the Australian way’ and that it’s always been part of the game – that is simply not true. Arthur Morris, Neil Harvey, Richie Benaud, Lindsay Hassett, Brian Booth, Graham McKenzie – there was never, ever, ever anything like that. Alan Davidson – nothing like that. It’s just nonsense to say that it was.”

And to Roberts’ point, teams were always of their time. Consider 1968, where Australia’s touring Ashes party wore black lace-up shoes, grey or navy blue socks, black suits, narrow ties, short back and sides, and were thought to be among the nicer sides to tour England. By 1972, it was buckles on the shoes, purple trousers, flares, orange shirts, wide ties, moustaches, sideburns, and, according to one former player, amid student rebellion and anti-authoritarian sentiment, “telling everyone to get fucked”. Incidentally, the ‘72 side outperformed the ‘68 side.

Australian players drink as they celebrate victory on the final day of the fifth Ashes Test at the Oval in 1972. Photograph: Mirrorpix/Getty Images

And while all agree that the 70s and 80s saw the seeds of on-field abrasion sprout, it is the professional era that heralded the employment of precise, pre-meditated verbal barbs on-field. Steve Waugh’s mental disintegration doctrine may have begun as a good-faith exercise in the pursuit of a professional edge, but it soon metastasised into a thinly-veiled excuse for players at all levels to behave with hostility to opponents. But because Australia were among the greatest ever, it seemed to follow that hostility and aggression was a precondition to success.

But in 2019, that front, that macho fight, that posturing verbal aggression would appear to be incompatible not only with community demands, but the personalities of its national team. Where they’ve been ugly – and they have – they’ve been attempting an impression of those that have gone before them.

It is confirmed by Paine. “Guys were playing to what they thought was expected of them, because that’s what Allan Border used to do or Merv Hughes used to do, or whoever.”

This challenge won’t just be two months or four months, it will be two years or four years. And hopefully they grow into strong men Justin Langer, Australia coach

While the staunch alpha might be taking a rest in the post-Cape Town era, it still contains its own complexities. Langer in particular reserves sympathy for the players of today. While more mild-mannered than his teammates of yesteryear, they’re nonetheless besieged with judgment from an often-unforgiving public, whether online or at the pub. He tells a story from after the 2017-18 Ashes series to underline it.

“The boys went out for a beer the day after,” he says. “They’ve just had a five-Test series. They’re out to celebrate. And I think one of the boys had a cigarette.

“They’re minding their own business. People who’ve come off Gallipoli – a lot of the old diggers used to smoke a cigarette. One of the players got filmed smoking a cigarette. And everyone’s all over him. All different sections of society. They’re saying, ‘shocking role models’, and you go, ‘My God’. OK, it’s not everyone’s preference to smoke a cigarette, but these are a couple of young guys sitting here smoking a cigarette, and it was like they’d committed a capital offence. That was the vitriol that they faced.

“The point is, we live in a much different space now. They’ve got to be mentally strong. They have to have thick skin. You gain that from experience. This challenge won’t just be two months or four months, it will be two years or four years. And hopefully they grow into strong men.”

Glenn McGrath clashes with England’s Alec Stewart at the SCG. Photograph: Clive Mason/ALLSPORT

The Latin tu quoque best describes modern Anglo-Australian cricketing relations. The simple translation is “you also”, and is used to discredit the opponent’s argument by pointing to inconsistencies in their own behaviour. Ahead of the impending mockery and inquisition about Australia’s recent exploits, Paine is certainly curious about the thin coverage of Monty Panesar’s recent comments on ball-tampering, but understands that he can’t point the finger, “because we’ve also done the wrong thing”.

On ball tampering, he is blunt. “If you look at Test cricket over the last hundred-odd years, ball tampering has been a part of it, whether people like to admit it or not.

“At any certain time on a cricket field, most of the guys probably know when something is going on, but they might not know exactly what it is. They might not know that someone’s got sandpaper, they might not know that they’ve got something taped onto his fingers. He might be using his thumbnail, he might be using his zipper, he might be using a mint.

“You’re pretty sure something might be going on, but what it actually is is sometimes up to the person who the ball’s going to. And that’s why every team’s got that person in their team, more often than not.”

And on Cape Town: “Did people know that something was happening? That we were trying to get the ball to reverse? Well there’s a period of time in all games when you’re trying to get the ball to reverse, but, it doesn’t mean that every single person knows exactly what he’s doing.”

The fateful events of Cape Town. Composite: Sky Sports/Getty

Amid a backdrop of cheating, scandal, and the return of the punished, Australian Cricket is attempting to coalesce its better angels. Hardness is no longer abusing, or even barking, at batsmen, it’s bowling in 42C heat, then effecting a run-out on the last ball of the day. It’s recognising the importance of mental health. It’s the administration holding their hands up on the now-infamous “line”, where the new chairman now says “you don’t get to be the arbiter of where that line is”. And when asked what it meant to be “tough” in 2019, it’s the coach Justin Langer replying: “Skill. Skill. Skill. Simple as that. If you think about it, skill speaks louder than every single word in the world, mate.”

In 2019, we saw more of Matthew Wade’s skill than his words than ever before. He has changed. And though there will no doubt be a great lag between Australia’s global cricket reputation and its reality, Australia’s current approach to toughness is far more aligned to George Bailey’s way of thinking than that of its modern predecessors.