T20 v Somerset (Home) Wednesday 1st June

Fb,

Still flogging that dead donkey? 

The match is live on SKY - no doubt they're hoping for a slew of sixes from the great man. Gayle has a new book out on June 2nd ie, the day after the match. Guess what the title is? You've guessed it. SIX MACHINE! Hopefully, there won't be any mention of Mel McLaughlin.

"Fb,



Still flogging that dead donkey? "

I haven't yet seen anyone contradict my view on this (and they've had plenty of time), so I'm assuming no-one disagrees with me. This is unusual!  

I'm surprised the subtitle, or some place on the cover, doesn't say 'World Boss', the c**k.   I wouldn't be happy with that picture if I were a man of his image-obsessed nature.  He looks like a terrorist whose face is too big for his head. 

Whether we personally like or dislike these 'big' characters - KP, Gayle, Stokes, Warner (and in a previous era  Lillee, Javed Miandad, Boycott, Botham, Chappell, Grieg etc) is irrelevant. The game needs them because their warts-and-all combination of cricketing genius and personality disorder is not only compelling but guarantees cricket precious column inches that might othrwise go to Rooney, Mourinho, Renaldo and Jamie Vardy. 

Discuss. Do not write on both sides of the paper at once etc etc...

Gayle is what he is - a product of a macho Jamaican culture in which women are unfortunately treated as objects far too often (and in which homosexual acts are illegal, one might add).  He doesn't hate women (misogyny). He and the culture that spawned him just have a different view of the (unequal) relationship between the sexes. If you're going to castigate him for "glaring and pernicious" character flaws, then you have to say the same about the sainted Bob Marley.

As you know I've  travelled the globe interviewing musicians from Africa, India, the Caribbean and beyond and the one thing I've learnt is not to impose our western liberal values on cultures that have quite different traditions and mores. I've interviewed a lof of Jamaican reggae musicans, from Toots Hibbert, Jimmy Cliff and Lee Scratch Perry to Sly and Robbie and Rita Marley and Marcia Griffiths. With the exception of Scratch, they all had the same attitude to women as Gayle and most of them (including Scratch) reckoned gay men should be castrated (or worse). Rita and Marcia's attitudes were no different to those of their male bretheren, either.   

If you condemn Gayle  as "misogynistic" and  "pernicious" you are in effect saying that Jamaican culture is  "misogynistic" and "pernicious". Personally I would hesitate to use such words. Illiberal and unsophisticated, yes. But pernicious? That's way too  harsh and judgemental. 

As for being discriminated against because of his colour, I'm sure it is an indignity he has to suffer on an almost daily basis and we should be very careful before criticising him for speaking out against it.

A Finch or Salt?