As if West Indies cricket didn’t have enough problems on and off the field, there is controversy this week following Mr Chris Gayle’s bizarre flirt with an Australian female reporter.

Make no mistake about it, Mr Gayle is an icon of West Indies cricket. The traditionalists will argue, with justification, that in the context of five-day Test cricket, he does not fit in the same category as the great West Indies batsmen. But, in the shorter, more modern formats of cricket his value is beyond debate.

Indeed, at age 36, and slowed though he has been with a back injury, which required surgery last year, many still consider the immensely powerful Mr Gayle to be king of the Twenty/20 version.

Achievements combined with charisma and sense of fun, on and off the field, have made the former West Indies captain the most recognisable and admired Caribbean cricketer since the retirement of Mr Brian Lara in 2007.

That’s why many consider the latest development a disaster for West Indies cricket — already badly hamstrung by weak performances on the field and chronically poor administration.

At best, Mr Gayle’s behaviour was entirely inappropriate. Some are describing it as sexism and worse.

We note that, as often happens in such cases, more reports of inappropriate behaviour by Mr Gayle towards women are coming out of the woodwork.

Mr Gayle and his staff have reportedly moved to take legal action in relation to one of those additional allegations.

What is not in doubt however — since it was there for all to see and hear on global television — was Mr Gayle’s unseemly comments to a professional journalist who was doing her job.

Those who know Mr Gayle well point to his tendency to be jocular and to find the funny side of any issue. Given his laughter, which was caught on television, Mr Gayle obviously thought his exchange with the reporter was funny.

This was an unprofessional and terrible mistake for which Mr Gayle could well pay dearly in terms of current and future professional contracts.

We suspect Mr Gayle has not been paying proper attention to developments around him over the past many years and was caught in the past during that fateful television interview. Hence his disrespectful and unprofessional conduct.

The truth is that, while women have played international cricket for decades, they have been mostly on the fringes. Indeed, cricket watchers will recall that up to just over a decade ago women were barred from the bar and its environs in the Kingston Club at Jamaica’s headquarters of cricket, Sabina Park. There was actually a sign that said so.

Up to then, similar prohibition applied to sections of several other famous cricket grounds around the world.

Much has changed over the past 10 to 15 years as cricket has been dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world. Many do not know, but Jamaica now boasts a female umpire in first-class cricket, Miss Jacquiline Williams. She is the first in the Caribbean to have achieved that high honour. And of course, Jamaican and other Caribbean women cricketers are consistently performing well, representing West Indies on the international stage.

Some good can come of Mr Gayle’s awful slip. Everyone in sport should have learnt a never-to-be-forgotten lesson. And, those in charge must make it their duty to ensure that the young ones learn from very early the absolute importance of discretion, and proper respect for others in every word and deed.