“What greater exhortation to integrity is there than the advice to ‘Keep your bat straight’?” asked an editorial in the Observer back in 1907. “What sterner rebuke than ‘It is not cricket!’” In the last century or so, the Guardian identified a variety of things as being “not cricket”, among them: the use of dumdum bullets by the British army in the wars against the Boers, proposals to run a dual carriageway bypass through the Kirklands playing fields in Birkenhead, the Labour party’s decision to stand a candidate in Daventry against Captain FitzRoy at the 1935 general election, ING’s takeover of the collapsed merchant bank Barings, and the threats of Bolton factory owners to replace mules with ring frames in the cotton mills. All of which are, inarguably, not cricket, by letter or spirit. The odd thing is that these days an awful lot of cricket seems to be not cricket too.

Last June, there was a an outbreak of “not cricket” in a match between Beanacre & Melksham and the Swindon Civil Service Club at Penhill. One of the Civil Service Club’s batsmen hit the ball in the air, then shouted “two” and started to run as the fielder was about to take the catch. The fielder dropped the ball, and the bowler, the Beanacre secretary Andrew Footner, jokingly complained to the umpire that the batsman was guilty of obstruction. Soon after, the same batsman blocked the wicketkeeper as he was trying to complete a run out. Footner, 51, decided that enough was enough. So he marched down the pitch to object, followed in short order by his son, who was fielding nearby. At which point, the batsman grabbed Footner by the throat and hit him in the face. Definitely not cricket.

“It was a handbags situation,” one onlooker told the local news agency. “It was general banter and a disagreement that got out of hand. One of the men had stupidly shoulder-barged into another and it got out of hand after that.” Footner later said: “It’s the first time I have ever seen a person punched on a cricket pitch in 40 years playing – and it had to be me.” He added: “I don’t blame the club, always had good banter with them.” Footner was out cold for between 20 and 30 seconds. Fortunately, by the time he came to everyone had remembered what they were about. After Footner had been treated by paramedics, he and the batsman shook hands and the two teams sat down to tea. Shortly after, the police arrived and arrested the batsman, who went without complaint. He explained that he “had had a really shitty couple of weeks”.

That same summer there was a mass brawl in a match between Saundersfoot and Kilgetty in Pembrokeshire, which ended with six players being suspended, and a bust-up at a fourth XI fixture between Basildon & Pitsea and Stanford-Le-Hope, when a batsman and a fielder disagreed over an umpire’s decision. The batsman clobbered the fielder with his bat, and both were banned from all cricket for a year. Most startlingly of all, a fight broke out at a game between Bronwydd and Pelsall in Walsall that was invaded by football supporters from a neighbouring ground. One of them then set fire to a Welsh flag, and then another headbutted the Bronwydd chairman Matthew Jones when he tried to extinguish the flames. He did, but only after “it burned a four- or five-inch hole”.

The previous year, another scrap happened in a village match between Aldington and Detling in Kent. One of Detling’s players refused to accept that he had misfielded a ball on the boundary. “He just saw red,” explained the umpire Robert Wanstall. “A few words were exchanged and this guy just ran off the pitch and up to our guys that were batting. I’ve never seen a guy run 30m to prove a point, so to speak. There was a bit of pushing and shoving. People were holding people back who were supposedly involved. There was a lot of shouting and a few swear words.” It was, Wanstall added, “a bit of a kerfuffle.” Again everyone shook hands, but Wanstall and the other Adlington players decided that in the circumstances “it wasn’t the best idea to go to the pub and have a drink together, so we just went straight back home”.

The MCC, alarmed by all this anecdotal evidence, has decided to try empowering the umpires by providing them with red and yellow cards. It is inviting leagues, schools, and universities to take part in trials this summer. The lesser offences – time-wasting, dissent, excessive appealing, offensive language – will be punished with a warning, followed by a five-run penalty in the second instance. For the more serious ones, there is no warning at all. Anyone who bowls a beamer, intimidates an umpire or threatens another player will be sent off the field for 10 overs. Anyone who commits an assault will be sent off for the remainder of the game.

Soon after the MCC made this announcement, Wahab Riaz and Ahmed Shehzad barged into each other during a match in the Pakistan Super League. As Scyld Berry warned in his Editor’s Notes in Wisden in 2008: “Once this taboo is broken, it could rapidly spread, just as sledging – sustained personal abuse – has spread from international teams downwards.” Of course, the system of showing cards and sending off players could also be said to be “not cricket”, which is why the sport has resisted introducing it for all this while. Sadly, it seems that these days more and more people are finding the distinction between what is and isn’t cricket difficult to make.

This is an extract taken from the Guardian’s weekly cricket email, The Spin. To subscribe, just visit this page, find ‘The Spin’ and follow the instructions.