"It happened many years ago at a party in Adelaide, in November 1967, and had nothing at all to do with anything that had occurred on a cricket field, or has happened on a cricket field since that evening. The New South Wales team threw the party but a couple of players had to leave to attend another function. When they arrived back at the party room it was to find a waitress, carrying a tray of drinks, knocking on the same door. The door was opened to display an almost empty room apart from a couple of players, one of whom, Graham Corling, who was at the time nicknamed ’I’ll be’, looked past the waitress at his two team-mates and said, using a well known four-letter expletive, that the party is over. Another player, embarrassed at the swearing in front of a lady, said: ’Aw I’ll be, that’s as subtle as a sledgehammer.’ In the way of Australian cricketers’ use of nicknames, Corling instantly became known as ’Percy’ because at that time the big song in the hit parade was ’When a Man Loves a Woman’ and the singer was Percy Sledge. From the moment anyone in Australian cricket who swore in front of a lady was said to have been guilty of sledging."
How funny it is. The word is now so commonly used and most of us don’t know where it came from. Mr.Richie Benaud does a wonderful job by keeping ordinary cricket lovers informed of what happens both on and off the field.
