This week's comment by Arsenal and England footballer Jack Wilshere that "the only people who should play for England are English people" has provoked a widespread reaction throughout a number of sports.

England cricket's naturalised South African batsman Kevin Pietersen was among many to have responded to the suggestion, asking the talented midfielder on Twitter: "Interested to know how you define foreigner? Would that include me. [Andrew] Strauss, [Matt] Prior, Justin Rose, [Chris] Froome, Mo Farah? Same difference..It's about representing your country! IN ANY SPORT!"

Wilshere's comments came in the wake of a discussion over the future international status of Manchester United's 18-year-old Adnan Januzaj, who is eligible for selection by Belgium, Serbia, Albania and Turkey, but will, under FIFA rules, be eligible to play for England if he remains in this country for five years.

Jack Wilshere's comment this week that only English people should play for the England team has raised a familiar and inconclusive debate

Before we go any further, just to make it clear that this is not an article about Jack Wilshere, it should be pointed out that his comment has been 100 per cent backed by former England captain Alan Shearer, who told BBC Sport: "I am of the opinion that to be English you should be born in England... Januzaj looks a fantastic young talent. But just because you've lived in England for five years that doesn't mean you can play for the national team."

South Africa's cricket captain Graeme Smith would presumably agree with Shearer's take on this issue, as he has has clearly never forgiven his former teammate Pietersen - who was born and raised in South Africa but has an English mother - for electing to play for his adopted country of England. "I'm patriotic about my country. And that's why I don't like Kevin Pietersen," Smith has gone on record as saying.

All this latest hoo-hah has taken place on the very day when the Queen launched the Baton Relay for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, an event which will, once again, focus minds on what it means to be English, or Scottish, or Welsh, or Northern Irish, as opposed to being British.

Mo Farah, multiple Olympic and world champion for Britain, was born in Somalia. So does that make him not British?

Wilshere's comments, at one level, are perfect sense. Of course only English people should represent England. But how do we define English people? Ay, there's the rub, as a very English playwright once put it...

Shearer's yardstick of representing the country in which you were born has an elemental appeal.

But let's think for a moment of one of the lasting images of English football: Terry Butcher, captain and central defender, leaving the pitch after helping England earn the goalless draw against Sweden in Stockholm that ensured qualification for the 1990 World Cup, his face, shirt, shorts and socks all showing evidence of blood that has poured from a bandaged head wound. Having had stitches inserted, Butcher had returned to the fray and made a conspicuous number of defensive headers.

In times of despair - and there have been a few - England supporters have loved to recall this iconic devotion to the cause of the Three Lions. But Butcher was not born in England. He was born in Singapore. So by Shearer's criterion, he should never have been on that pitch in Stockholm.

Terry Butcher gave blood for England to help them qualify for the 1990 World Cup finals. But this Three Lions icon was not born in England

In 2011, UK Athletics introduced some competitors to its team who had lately competed for other nations - a circumstance which earned them criticism from some quarters of the media for being 'plastic Brits'.

The man responsible for this turn of events was Charles van Commenee, the Dutchman appointed as head coach of UK Athletics in 2008. His position was the same one espoused this week by the former Football Association chairman David Bernstein, who has said England must "play within the rules and get the best team we can".

One of the newcomers, high hurdler Tiffany Porter - born and raised in the United States, but entitled to a British passport through having an British mother - found herself at the centre of feverish debate when, at a press conference ahead of the 2012 World Indoor Championships, she was challenged to sing the National Anthem by a reporter.

Many newspaper columns were subsequently written on the question of whether Britain should expect its sporting performers to know the words and tune of "God Save the Queen". And if Porter had, would that have proved she was British?

There is an uncertain swirl of response to these circumstances within Britain - it is similar to the kind of debate which took place when Swede Sven Goran Eriksson became the first foreigner to take charge of the England football team. Eriksson's foreignness faded almost into the background when England enjoyed a superlative 5–1 win over their ancient rivals, Germany;
but as the Eriksson momentum failed, usually around the quarter-final stage of any tournament worth winning, he became a foreigner once again.

In rugby, as in football and athletics, there have been periodic outbursts of complaint over players switching to play for different national teams. Shortly before taking England on their ultimately ill-fated journey to the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand as manager, Martin Johnson, who had captained England to World Cup victory eight years earlier, spoke in liberal tones about the whole issue with the sport.

Acknowledging the criticisms that had been raised over England squad members such as Manu Tuilagi and Thomas Waldrom, whom some saw as operating under a flag of convenience, Johnson recalled his own time as a young player spent in New Zealand, whose under-21 side he played for.

Martin Johnson, who led England to the 2003 Rugby World Cup and subsequently managed the England team, commented: "It's what you do and who you are...not particularly where you are born."

He told the Independent: "People don't understand, talking about our guys born abroad. They've got to come in and prove themselves like anyone else. If we think they're the right people and the right characters then they can play... It's what you do and who you are, not particularly where you are born."

But then if you waive birthplace as a means of determining nationality, surely you need to retain a blood link? Of course, it's all relative, ultimately, as we reflect on the nomadic history of humankind over time. But the logical end point of Johnson's argument seems to be that you can play for England if you have what the US astronaut programme used to call the "right stuff"
about you - that is, if you have the right kind of "English" stuff .

So we return to the question. What is "English stuff"?

Wilshere had a bash at defining this. "We have to remember what we are. We are English. We tackle hard, are tough on the pitch and are hard to beat. We have great characters. You think of Spain and you think technical but you think of England and you think they are brave and they tackle hard. We have to remember that. "

But then Wilshere was once described by his manager at Arsenal, Arsene Wenger, as having "Spanish technique, but an English heart."

And we return to the question. What is an "English heart"?

George Orwell listed a liking for a "nice cup of tea" as among the quintessential national characteristics in his essay "England Your England"

At the end of his 1941 essay entitled "England Your England", George Orwell concludes that, though the Stock Exchange may be pulled down, and the horse plough may give way to the tractor, and the country houses may be turned into children's holiday camps, and the Eton and Harrow match forgotten, "England will still be England, an everlasting animal stretching into the future and the past, and like all living things, having the power to change out of recognition, and yet remain the same."

In his casting around for essentially English characteristics, Orwell came up with two straight away. They were, firstly, a tendency towards "'privateness", as evidenced by a predilection for hobbies and pastimes such as stamp collecting and comforting things like the fireside and the "nice cup of tea".

And secondly, a love of flowers.

Is this helping?

Personally, I feel most closely identified with that old red cross on white when I eat toast and marmalade. Maybe that's something to do with my grandpa. He was very English.

I feel English too when I indicate to a fellow customer that they are due to be served before me.

Or when I watch England's football team fail to win the World Cup. Or the European Championship.

The further abroad I go, the more likely I am to take with me a book written by a quintessentially English writer, such as Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin or Evelyn Waugh.

So I think, putting this all together, the answer to the Wilshere question is plain enough. Then again, what do I know? I was born in Edinburgh.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £12.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.