Plus ca change

So Chris Gayle doesn't want to be West Indies captain much longer and absolutely everyone in the game is mad as hell. Well!

First of all, despite the ranting since he revealed his tortured soul, this unwillingness to lead is far from new. Around 100 years ago the Hon. F S Jackson, a Yorkshireman with a few bob in his pocket, went off to the grouse moors when he felt like it.

Douglas Jardine, an amateur with very few shillings in his pockets, went fishing in Australia rather than lead England in a state game; Walter Hammond, a professional turned amateur so he could be England captain, travelled round Oz in a large car rather than spend too much time with his team in 1946-7.

Plus ca change, I hear you say. No doubt Gayle thinks he can earn more dollars by playing IPL every year and, as he is now 30, that 20/20 will see him to the end of his career.

Besides all that, most of us know that the world of 2009 is vastly different from the globe as made up in, for instance, 1945 when the thoughts that dominate cricket and how its players should behave, were formulated.

Cricket people see that there is a set way to the top and that, once the selectors have acknowledged your right to a place in the Test side, you should play according to the principles of loyalty and sportsmanship until they - without warning - tip you back into the other side of the fence.

No doubt Gayle has taken note of what happened to Kevin Pietersen and determined it will not be his fate. It is a sign of the 21st century kicking in and my guess is that we will witness more evidence shortly.

It is Gayle's right to run his own life just as it was Jackson's, Jardine's and Hammond's; although the old folk who run cricket will never see that.

Plus ca change indeed.