THE snow may have only just begun to crest the hills but over in Australia the sledging season is well and truly under way. For such an apparently anachronistic sporting event, the imminent arrival of an Ashes series can still get under the skin of the most professional modern sportsman. If you have been following the reportage in the last few days, those upstart Aussies and their ‘pom bashing’, are at it again. Nathan Lyon, the Aussies’ off spinner, has been talking of his hopes of “ending the careers” of some England players during the latest instalment of this age-old feud, referencing the mid-tour retirement of Graeme Swann during the 5-0 rout in Australia in 2013-14, and the fact the likes of Kevin Pietersen, Jonathan Trott and Matt Prior hardly played for their country again after the embarrassment. “Being part of that squad, seeing Mitchell Johnson scare them, was unbelievable,” Lyon said this week. “We knew that they were broken. Hopefully we can recreate history.”

Alastair Cook, a veteran of 147 Test matches, was trying his best to rise above it all. “It’s really strange,” Cook said. “I just had a really nice 10-minute chat with Nathan. He was the first person I saw when I got the ground. He asked how my kids were; I asked how his kids were. All the talking stops very quickly after the first two hours of play.”

For the record, this isn’t strictly correct. While the opening throes of the first Test can certainly define an Ashes series – who can forget Steve Harmison’s first ball of the 2007 Ashes series, a wide which went straight to Andrew Flintoff at second slip, setting the tone for an Australian win by 277 runs and a 5-0 act of retribution for England’s 2006 win – usually the trash talking merely reaches a crescendo as the tour goes on. Shane Warne was as merciless that series with his tongue as he was with ball in hand, not least as to whether Paul Collingwood fully merited the MBE he got in the New Year’s honours on the strength of 17 runs during that 2016 series. Things weren’t much better at Brisbane in 2013, when Aussie skipper Michael Clarke saw the fearsome Mitchell Johnson joining the attack upon English tail ender Jimmy Anderson, and told him to “prepare to get his arm broken.”

So for all Cook’s protestations of innocence, right from the outset of this long-running sporting saga, the English (and occasionally the Scottish) have hardly been whiter than white. The term, The Ashes was famously coined in a satirical obituary published in the Sporting Times, immediately after Australia’s first ever Test win on English soil, at the Oval in 1882, with the famous little six-inch terracotta urn materialising shortly afterwards. But what is less well known is that a shamelessly unsporting gesture from WG Grace went some way to starting all the ill feeling off.

At 110 for six in the second innings – a lead of 72 – England were looking good for a second home Test match against Australia. But Grace wanted to make sure of it. When Sammy Jones, the Australian No 8, left his crease to pat down a divot, Grace took off the bales and appealed. As the horrified umpire gave the poor man his marching orders, Frederick ‘The Demon’ Spofforth – the first of a long line of great Australian fast bowlers - marched into the English dressing room between innings to call Grace a cheat. With their dander up, the Aussies bowled the English out in short order to secure their maiden win on English soil.

Rogues, bounders and scoundrels have dominated this epic fixture. And it is worth noting some of our ain folk have been worst of the lot. No child of the 1980s who witnessed the Australian TV drama Bodyline could forget classic Ashes anti-hero Douglas Jardine, born to Bombay, India to two Scottish parents, and the England captain’s evil 1932-33 plan to take the legs from the imperious Don Bradman by bowling at his body, rather than at the stumps. England won four of the five, but were lucky to avoid a lynching - with one Harold Larwood delivery left Bert Oldfield with a fractured skull. There will be none of that as the first bowl is bowled at midnight tonight, as England look to keep the Ashes in their possession. But as ever, Australia will only let them do so over their dead bodies.