Dave Cameron, the president of Cricket West Indies, has the too-well-deserved reputation for engaging in intellectual malfeasance, of chatting nonsense at the most inopportune time, and of having the dexterity to place his foot in his own mouth. And he has the skill to accomplish all three at the same time.
The latest example of Mr Cameron's malady has recently been displayed in this newspaper in the form of a claim, when you take his statement to its core, that women are the cause for the decline of cricket's popularity in the Caribbean. To appreciate the gravamen of Mr Cameron's sexist drivel, a verbatim reproduction is important.
He said: "Firstly, we only have female PE (physical education) teachers, which is a problem. Most of them don't know cricket. The game of cricket is very complicated. They don't know the history and neither are they interested.
"That becomes an issue. When we went to school, most of our PE teachers, if not all, were male. So they coached cricket, football, track and field. We're not getting that anymore."
Forget for now the many women internationally, and in the Caribbean, who have played and excelled at cricket the Stafanie Taylors of this world. Or the thousands and thousands of women who love and know the sport, who are ardent supporters of the West Indies team and turn up at matches, domestic and international, to the benefit of the game. For there is something more invidious in Dave Cameron's statement. It has echoes of a pre-suffragette world and is of the kind of thinking that presumes the superiority of men over women. Which, of course, is nonsense.
Better perspective needed
Perhaps if Mr Cameron takes a good look around him, he'd get not only a better perspective of the world, and the society in which he lives, but of the real capacity of women and, perhaps, their potential, if so employed, to help in the regeneration of West Indies cricket.
In the Caribbean, women are increasingly likely to be better educated than their male partners, and, it seems, more patient and strategic thinkers. Men are stronger and, perhaps, more impulsive. They dominate in the area of brawn, as the women, to a larger extent, exercise their brain.
Rather than lamenting the dominance of women on the PE fields, Mr Cameron should be celebrating their presence and attempting to fashion ways to leverage the value of their unique strengths to West Indies cricket. Perhaps the regional team would do better with a bit more brain, strategically employed, and a little less brawn.
