The ICC's red card introduction will keep amateur sides professional, and they should be applauded

The ICC announced red cards would be introduced for 'extreme behaviour'

Billy Bowden jokingly showed Glenn McGrath a red card in 2005 (Getty)

It was never a bed of roses in club cricket and no one took any prisoners.

My own team was Chirk, on the Shropshire/Clwyd border, and though we played in the North Wales League we were not Welsh to the core. We used that to our advantage when playing deep in enemy territory. When the Dolgellau players in deepest Gwynedd called quick singles in Welsh and one of their number slipped on damp ground between the wickets, we were able to claim ignorance, forget good grace and run their man out. We were accused of a lack of sportsmanship and all hell let loose. We won the game and didn’t much care. That’s cricket.

But it seems that the row which ensued out in the centre that Saturday afternoon was only the half of what come to follow in the game. We might conjure images of gentility - the village green, the afternoon teas, the good grace - but the competitiveness of club cricket has intensified to the extent that in the simmer of last year at least half a dozen club matches were abandoned prematurely and players banned for varying lengths of time. In this sport, much as any others, we are witnessing a staggering sense of victimhood and entitlement which has spilled over into deplorable conduct. Why should cricketers get away with that? It’s why the International Cricket Committee’s recommendation that a red card penalty be introduced to the Laws of Cricket for the first time is so welcome.

There have been few occasions when this organisation has acted decisively. The ICC has presided over the wealth of the game being gifted to England, India and Australia. Not this time. Other lesser punishments, such as run penalties or 'sin bins', were discussed but ruled out as a universal measure because, the ICC judged, "it would be harder to achieve consistency of application around the world". Red cards it will be.

For once, it can’t be said that the macro outstrips the micro. There was Mike Gatting v Shakoor Rana and Jimmy Anderson v Ravindra Jadeja, of course, but beside those incidents it is hard to cite too many which would have warranted a player being given his matching orders. It’s at club level that the bullies do their work. And why should those who throw their weight around the game’s fringes get away with it. It’s at that tier, after all, that the teenagers who acquire decades of participation first experience the competitive game.

The sport has escaped for too long from the type of disciplinary regime at the core of other sports. There has been something dismally lily-livered about Test sides being fined such a nominal sum for falling behind the over rate that they become repeat offenders. What universe does this sport actually think it is occupying? This is a time when dwindling numbers of Test spectators are frustrated by the anaemic spectacle which the legal over rate is designed to militate against.

Kevin Pietersen has had his controversial moments on the pitch (Getty)

Test cricket needs a more fundamental overhaul, including a mechanism to legislate against home sides preparing helpful pitches for their players. At the height of the Ashes victory last year, the notion was posited in one excellent Sky Ashes debate that the visiting side should be given the chance to bat or bowl first, thus limiting the criminal way that home advantage limits competitiveness. It never happened.

But at a lower level, the abuse being dished out to officials is so bad that a survey of umpires revealed that 40 per cent of them have considered giving up the game. At the lower levels of the club game some of the hapless souls asked to officiate are junior members of the batting side. For those inclined to take the frustrations of the working week out on officials and throw their weight around, be warned: there are serious consequences coming your way.