Christopher Henry Gayle - the name says it all. A Pirate from the Caribbean, Jamaican to be precise, Gayle, unlike most of his countrymen, decided to take to cricket rather than win medals in Olympic events. And what a fine decision that was! For two reasons - one, the Gayle winds blow rather consistently these days in different parts of the world, in the KFC Big Bash League, the Bangladesh Premier League and of course, the Indian Premier League, and two, Gayle can never run more than two runs on a given ball - he prefers sending them into the crowd instead.
Chris Henry's story is rather fascinating. For most part of his international career for the West Indies, despite being a regular feature of his national side (if you can call it that), Gayle seemed to be amongst the most inconsistent players around. Things seemed to change when he was made the captain following Brian Lara's retirement and Ramnaresh Sarwan's failure at the job. Gayle pummeled the first hundred in a Twenty20 International during the first game of the inaugural World Twenty20 championships against hosts South Africa and it became instantly clear then that this man enjoyed the new format. Gayle then marauded 333 fantastic runs against Sri Lanka in a Test match. But following the World Cup of 2012, Gayle ran into trouble with his mercurial, often whimsical, West Indies Cricket Board. Following some disputes over contracts with senior players and a spicy radio interview, Gayle and some others were left out in the woods. The result - the West Indies plunged to an all-new low while playing a side without Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard.
To his credit, Gayle didn't let all of that hurt him. He started with the IPL of 2011. After being ignored in the auctions, Gayle got picked up by the Royal Challengers Bangalore as a replacement for injured Dutch-Aussie paceman Dirk Nannes. And Gayle made that place in the eleven his own. With a century against the Kolkata Knight Riders in his first game, Gayle took off, blowing away hapless opponents with a long, thick club of a bat and taking the leading run scorer's Orange Cap in half the time. Gayle then made an appearance Down Under in the Australian Big Bash League, playing for the Sydney Thunder, fittingly opening alongside Pocket Rocket David Warner. Gayle winds blew all around the Aussie coastline ensuring that Thunder put on a strong fight despite losing Warner to international duty, but unfortunately, the side couldn't win the League. Back for RCB at the Champions League, Gayle made a mockery of the Somerset Sabres in a must-win game, taking his side all the way to the finals of the tourney from a situation where most had written them off. Then came the Bangladesh Premier League. Turning out for the Barisal Burners, Gayle burnt the pitch wherever he went, sending white balls into the Bay of Bengal rather frequently.
Clearly, T20 has caught Gayle's imagination and he no longer needs the West Indies team. But what makes him such a phenomenon? Firstly, fear in the mind of the bowler. When you've got a beast of a man, six and a half foot tall, standing at the other end, knowing that if you don't hit the bottom of his bat, it's going to be out of the ground, bowling becomes an act of great daredevilry. Gayle doesn't need technique to hit the ball. He plays it the baseball way. Stand in the crease, wait for the little white ball to come and tonk it with all your might. Back foot, front foot don't matter at all.
Few have mastered the art of bowling to Gayle without losing the ball. Jacques Kallis seems to be one of them. His yorker in the KKR-RCB game of the Champions League to send Gayle's stumps flying back a mile was quite a sight. As a result, KKR went on to win that game. More recently, Kallis had Gayle caught at mid-on in the ongoing IPL, bowling a straight-as-a-dart bouncer at Gayle's body and cramping him for room and once again, KKR went on to win. Kallis exploited a rather well-known but rarely used feature of Chris Henry's batting - he can never pull a cricket ball with reasonable success.
Having watched Gayle's batting fairly closely, I have come to certain conclusions about him. The pull shot doesn't exist in his book, so bowling short and straight at his head annoys him very much. Further, being as tall as the Eiffel Tower, anything you throw down at Gayle is most unlikely on most pitches to reach high enough to make him pull it; if you don't have enough pace, the ball shall just sit up on him and say 'hit me', which he would love doing. Anything you bowl, no matter where you pitch it, would either be a length ball or a half-volley and God help the bowler then. So the only real option you've got against Gayle is to bowl him yorkers, 6 out of 6 balls, and with pin-point accuracy. If you miss your line or length by an inch, it's going to be in the second tier. Worse is to give him room to have a free swing. You let a foot's distance between Gayle's feet and the ball when it reaches him, and it won't be in the second tier - it'll be in the neighboring town.
Obviously, when your team isn't at the receiving end of the Gayle winds (thanks to Kallis, the Kolkata Knight Riders haven't so far), you want to see the ball be blown for as far as the eye can see. But for the larger good of the bowling community, will somebody stop him? Like always, only the West Indies Cricket Board seems like it can.
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