'Sledging, like nostalgia, isn't what it used to be, and nowadays is usually nasty rather than humorous. Somewhere in between the amusing and the personal was a little publicised English sledge on the 1994-5 tour, during a game in New South Wales, when the Australian Test player Michael Bevan came out to bat. Bevan didn't know that the England wicketkeeper, Stephen Rhodes, had got hold of a tape recording (via a sleepless occupant of the next room in a thin-walled hotel) of Bevan's encounter with a rather loud and expressive young lady the previous night. As the bowler ran in, Rhodes turned on the X-certificate recording he had in his pocket, and Bevan's scrambled brain resulted in a wild slog and a stumping' -

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