You could almost hear the sweat running off Jonathan Agnew’s brow. Sex had penetrated the hallowed halls of cricket.

During breaks in ball-by-ball commentary from Test Match Special, the BBC’s Cricket correspondent regularly talks to interesting people who are enthusiastic about the game. It’s the cricketing equivalent of R3’s Private Passions on music – intriguing, charming and revealing. One of his deeply knowledgeable interviewees during the Lord’s Test was the film director Sam Mendes. Another was Ed Balls. At the tea interval on Saturday, however, “Aggers” (as he is named by the Fourth Form chumps in the commentary box) came up against Kathy Lette , the feminist writer and performer.

Wearing an Australian flag dress (we were told) and beginning with the confession that she was “a cricket virgin” (at the very breathing of such a word in the sanctum of Lord’s, you could feel Agnew’s blushes begin to bloom), it was not obvious what insights Lette might bring to cricket lovers. She did, however, come out with one line that was as droll as Mae West and another that was so irritating that I immediately switched off.

“I’ve had marriages that were over in less time than this game takes to finish,” she justly complained. Then she went on to bemoan the wearing of long trousers by the players on the field, saying that shorts would give women spectators something more entertaining to look at.

Agnew objected. Surely one of the points about feminism was to outlaw the sexual objectification of the body. Why would it be OK for women to stare at men’s bodies but not for men to gaze at women’s? “It’s our turn,” Lette unhesitatingly answered.

Joe Root hitches a ride - but there's not a knee in sight (Photo: Getty)

At that instant, I changed channels on the car radio. That classic modern feminist combination of waspish assertiveness, complacency, double-standards and victim mentality drives me up the wall on the BBC’s Today programme. I’m certainly not going to put up with it on TMS.

If only she had answered, “don’t be silly, Jonathan dear. Obviously spectators at sports events are going to take pleasure in looking at the bodies of players of the opposite sex. These are fit young people who are as beautifully put together as human beings can possibly be. Part of the point of being there is to enjoy the harmless thrill of fancying them.” That would have been worth hearing.

If the sight of Joe Root does something magical for you, it doesn’t bother me Neil Lyndon

Don’t give me any of that self-righteous BS about it being women’s “turn” to enjoy this pleasure. I know for certain that women have always gazed upon sportsmen with lust in their hearts – and I don’t depend merely on Jilly Cooper for my evidence.

In the early 1970s, I had a girlfriend who enjoyed football. We went together to many matches. No matter how horrible the winter weather or the behaviour of the fans on the terraces of the London clubs we visited, she never complained. And it wasn’t just a love of ball games that we shared. When she came round to my flat to watch the Cup Final between West Ham and Fulham in 1975 – Bobby Moore’s last match at Wembley – we agreed at half-time that it was stupefyingly boring; so we switched off the telly and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon in bed. I am sure the old hero would have approved.

Bobby Moore (left) swaps shirts with Pele after the epic 1970 World Cup encounter between England and Brazil in Guadalajara, Mexico (Photo: AP)

It took me years, however, to find out that this woman’s most pointed interest in the game wasn’t – as I had always fondly imagined – in the merits of 4-3-3 as against 4-4-2 but, more basely, in the players’ bodies. “I like looking at their legs,” she finally confessed.

I don’t, however, think she meant legs.

When I was working in California in the 1980s, one of my female colleagues told me that a group of women in the office regularly discussed the finer points of American football. Their particular interest was to arrive at a consensus on the player with the MVBs.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Most Valuable Buns,” she answered.

Now, as poor Agnew’s encounter with Kathy Lette, proves, women’s interests in sporting men’s bodies can be openly acknowledged. Which is absolutely fine. No problem. If the sight of Joe Root does something magical for you, it doesn’t bother me. However, by one of those twists of two-facedness which are among the specialities of modern feminism, an equivalent freedom is forbidden for men.

Decades ago, in an episode of Cheers, the character played by Ted Danson observed to a family gathering “that Steffi Graf has got a cute tush”. A frigid chill of disapproval seized the room. “I’m just saying …” he lamely muttered.

I triggered a comparable reaction during Wimbledon this year, when I had a conversation with my ardently right-on adult son about Serena Williams’s tennis dress. It demeaned a great athlete, I argued, to appear in a garment with soppy frills gathered around the hips like a little girl’s ballet tutu.

He agreed but said “I think Wimbledon’s dress code doesn’t allow women to wear shorts.”

“Oh yes it does. Yulia Putintseva was wearing shorts when she played Serena,” I answered. Then I added “And that, I may say, was a sight worth being when she bent over to receive service.”

Perhaps fathers shouldn’t speak to sons in such terms but I was given to understand this observation crossed a PC line.

Why? Where’s the harm in it? It’s not as if I was whistling at the woman in the street or staring at her on the train so fixedly that she had to move seats. My interest in Yulia’s shorts caused her no personal discomfort or embarrassment – any more than Kathy Lette’s strange desire to see Mitchell Johnson’s knees would cause him to break stride as he is running in to smash the ball into Stuart Broad’s ribs.

Sexy isn’t Sexist, as the great Paula Wright nobly asserts on her Twitter account @SexyIsntSexist.

But there’s no doubt that it is a terribly confusing business. Aggers old dear: you’re far better keeping out of it.