ON THIS DAY
Follow UsBorn on September 21, 1979, the rise of Chris Gayle was revolutionary in many ways. A few decades after West Indies cricket ruled the world, banking on gigantic, powerful fast bowlers, Gayle’s use of his height and strength to send balls out of the park was a refreshing, albeit not always likeable, take.
While brutal bouncers have seldom been looked down on by cricket purists, a top-order batsman wielding his willow with total disregard for cricketing grammar was a cardinal sin. Batsmen always had more suitors; the only condition was he would follow the basics to the T.
Whether it be a back-foot defence or an exquisite cover drive, batsmen were instructed to hold their pose long after the shot, further imposing that batting was an art that people especially paid to watch. However, when Gayle made his debut in 1999, the Jamaican had made it very clear that he was playing for himself and not the crowd.
Like his contemporaries like Tillakaratne Dilshan, Virender Sehwag, or Brendon McCullum, Gayle dismissed footwork from batting and relied solely on hand-eye coordination. However, what he had that the others didn’t was massive strength and longer reach. While others needed to adjust their body angles to send deliveries to different parts of the ground, Gayle just had to get underneath the ball.
Out of the 10,480 ODI runs that Gayle has tallied in 301 matches, a massive 6,498 of them came in boundaries. And nothing defines Gayle’s approach to batting better than this. This gets even better in the T20Is, where Gayle scored 1376 runs out of his tally of 1899 in boundaries.
If Sanath Jayasuriya had made exploiting bowlers in the initial overs trendy in the 1996 WC, Gayle’s 57-ball 117 against the Proteas laid the foundation for how batting is done today. IPL was due to start the following year, and Gayle was lapped up for huge money by Kolkata Knight Riders.
While Gayle’s aggressive mindset and brute strength were tailor-made for a format like IPL, his consistency was a hindrance. Hence, he took a few years to find his form before eventually exploding with Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Gayle would go on to score 608 and 733 runs in 2011 and 2012 IPL editions, respectively, before making the highest ever T20 score of 175 in 2013. A 31-ball-century was unheard of prior to that - a knock following which he called himself 'Universe Boss'.
Gayle’s increasing affinity towards T20 cricket led to his distance from the national team as he started freelancing for various T20 franchises. And a man of his skills had no shortage of suitors. So far, Gayle has played for teams like Kolkata Knight Riders, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Sydney Thunder, Barisal Burners, Dhaka Gladiators, Jamaica Tallawahs, Barisal Bulls, Melbourne Renegades, Lahore Qalandars and many more.
Apart from winning the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy, the 2012 ICC World Twenty20 and the 2016 ICC World Twenty20 titles with West Indies, Gayle has won the Caribbean Premier League in 2013 and 2016 with Jamaica Tallawahs, the 2017 Bangladesh Premier League with Rangpur Riders, the 2018 Global T20 Canada with Vancouver Knights and the 2018 Afghanistan Premier League with Balkh Legends.
While Gayle’s love for white-ball cricket does give the perception that his skills were limited, it can’t be farther from the truth. He was the first cricketer to score centuries in all three formats of the game, the fastest double centurion in ODIs and only the fourth player to have two triple centuries in Test cricket.
While Gayle absolutely adores scoring runs by the bounty and at lightning-fast speed, he has displayed Test-cricket temperament on multiple occasions. He would bat almost seven-and-a-half hours in 2009 at the Adelaide to save a match against Australia, scoring 165. The following year, he batted almost 10 hours to score 333 against Sri Lanka, holding on his own against Muralitharan in Galle.
