John Lever, the former England bowler, knows a little bit about intimidation on the cricket pitch.

As a player he came up against some of the best bowlers to have ever played the game, and often they did not need to say a word to get their message across.

That contrasts greatly with the verbal abuse that increasingly passes for sledging in the modern game, and which has reached such an acrimonious level that the International Cricket Council have felt the need to intervene.

Before the World Cup started last week, Dave Richardson, the ICC chief executive, announced an increase in penalties for first time offenders and suspensions for those with previous for behaving badly on the cricket field.

Richardson’s announcement came on the back of several high profile incidents in Test matches between England and Australia, and then India’s tour of Australia.

David Warner, the Australia batsman, and India pair Shikhar Dhawan and Virat Kohli have all been fined for breaching the code of conduct in the past few months.

It is a situation that Lever calls “a little bit sad” and one he thinks is a symptom of the time.

“I think everybody seems to think that because the game is so much more professional now, that any edge you can get is worth pursuing,” he said.

Lever, who coaches cricket at Bancroft’s School in Essex, is increasingly seeing the behaviour slip into the school game in England. The link between the belief among county coaches that more shouting leads to higher energy in the field is hard to miss, although Lever does not necessarily agree that the two go hand-in-hand.

“I don’t know if it helps at all, they seem to think it does, but it’s a little bit sad,” Lever said. “I don’t think we need that, and in the school stuff that I take I tell the team ‘you are not talking to the opposition, you can encourage our bowlers as much as you like, but you’re not going to talk to the opposition’.”

Sledging is not a new thing in cricket, nor is intimidation, but Lever points to his experiences playing Tests against the great West Indies teams of the 1970s and Eighties, and facing the Australia pace attack of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thompson, as examples of how it can be done without crossing a line.

“The biggest sledge of the West Indies, when they had all those quick bowlers, the biggest sledge was sucking their teeth,” Lever said. “You would play and miss and there was a look, and the sucking of the teeth, and that was it, there wasn’t a lot said, there really wasn’t.”

Lever also did not need to be told that a bowler could hurt him if he wanted, it was understood, and accepted as part of the game, as was the fact that lower-order batsmen were not generally targeted.

“I do remember facing Lillee and missing five balls out of six,” Lever said. “Lillee, who was a great pro, never smiled, he just finished his action and turned around and walked back to his mark.

“He was finishing about three yards in front of me, and the last ball [of the over] I played and missed I almost gave a rueful grin.

“And as [Rodney] Marsh [the Australian wicket-keeper] has caught it and the ball has thudded into his gloves [I hear behind me] ‘you can open your f***ing eyes now I’ve got the ball’. Lillee almost smiled.

“But, I was expecting it, I’d played and missed at six. I think I would have turned around and said ‘you hold your bat still, I’ll try and hit it’.”