What do you get when you pit Chris Gayle against an inexperienced bowling attack with a wet ball in a Twenty20? Utter carnage. On Wednesday, England’s young side were exposed to a GayleStorm at the Wankhede. Gayle’s unbeaten innings of 100 off just 48 balls blew away England’s seemingly solid target of 183. In this kind of mood, Gayle has no contemporary in T20 cricket.
It was a typical innings by the Jamaican: low on running, high on boundaries. In fact his running yielded just 14 runs for himself, all singles. In an era where players regularly scamper between the wickets, Gayle barely broke into a jog. But any thought of running went out of the window when he was pummelling the ball to the boundary. He’s too good to need to run. Anything remotely full from the bowlers was deposited back over their head. Gayle’s shots between mid-off and mid-on produced 57 of his even 100 runs. At one point, Ben Stokes tried to drop it in short, but he was clouted for back-to-back sixes over square leg. There seemed to be no way for England to stem the torrent of runs from the T20 king.
Despite the chaos, Gayle seemed as carefree as ever. The bowlers looked flustered as they saw their sizeable total leak away effortlessly. Towels were out after almost every delivery to dry the ball and there was even a stoppage after the 10th over to try and remove dew from the outfield. It was futile. Gayle continued to loft drives with that smooth flow of the bat that has become iconic. Now, his career T20 stats have become more than iconic – they’re legendary.
His overall tally of 8826 runs dwarfs the next best return of 6998 (Brad Hodge). Among players with at least 1000 T20 runs, his average of 43.69 is the highest. In addition, his tally of 17 hundreds is as many as ten more than the next best ton-getter (Brendon McCullum), and all of that is at a strike rate of over 150. Whichever way you slice it, Gayle is the best T20 batsman ever. The daylight between him and the chasing pack is blinding.
Yet this innings against England has come at one of the more challenging points of his career. By Gayle’s standards his performances in Bangladesh, Australia and Pakistan this winter were relatively disappointing – average 31.37, strike rate 156, zero hundreds. But his winter of franchise cricket will be most remembered for his sexist pitch-side comments to Mel McLaughlin in the Big Bash League. It was a unique situation in which Gayle was no longer the chilled-out entertainer. He was the villain. It was an ugly moment that magnified the gender inequality still worryingly present in professional sport.
But the dust appears to have settled on that issue – he made his apology, he paid his fine, we moved on. So it was back to business as usual for Gayle, and he is in the business of scoring T20 hundreds. The laid-back demeanour was back; in truth, it never left. But this World T20 innings allowed us to see Chris Gayle as we want to see Chris Gayle: putting the ball into the stands.
So what does this mean for West Indies at the World T20?
Three games in and the form book has already gone out of the window. Hosts India came in as unanimous favourites. They lost. As for Gayle’s West Indies, they’ve barely played T20I cricket of late, so it was difficult to judge their form coming into India. However, their team contains a cast of experienced T20 specialists such as Dwayne Bravo, Samuel Badree and Darren Sammy.
If one thing is to be taken from the tournament so far, it’s that experienced players have thrived. Luke Ronchi and Nathan McCullum made vital contributions as New Zealand shocked India. The evergreen Shahid Afridi was dominant against against the young dark-horses Bangladesh. Mohammad Hafeez supported him brilliantly. Those four players, along with Gayle are 34 or older.
After these there games, predicting the T20 World Cup’s outcome has become almost impossible. The Jamaican might bring the West Indies a second crown, he might not. One thing is cannot be disputed, though: Chris Gayle’s T20 record is head and shoulders above the rest. His hundred against England extended that. He may play with a laid-back style, but he has serious substance to back it up.
