Mercenary Gayle sets the T20 gold standard

On a cloudy day in Bengaluru, Chris Gayle struck the Chinnaswamy Stadium like a thunder storm that knew nothing about moderation. The 33 year old, with a reputation for smothering opponents, took the format by its collar and hauled it many notches higher with a knock that had history written on it from the moment he arrived at the crease. In an incredible display of belligerent batting, Gayle scored the fastest 50 (17 balls), quickest 100 (30), 150 (53) and the highest individual score – 175* (66) – to help his side reach the largest score ever made in a T20 match – 263-5. But it wasn’t the falling records that impressed as much as the manner in which the Kingstonian achieved those feats. Gayle played what is probably the most destructive innings of cricket seen in recent memory. The brutality of the innings confirmed Gayle’s status as the most accomplished mercenary in the garb of a cricketer.

Gayle has always been a stormy force to reckon with ever since he took guard in the shortest format of the game. The aggressive batsman found in the format much of what he desired from his cricket, as if it were his soul mate. The instant coffee version of the gentleman’s game enabled Gayle to shed his inhibitions and express himself with an almighty swing of his unforgiving blade to send his opponents straight from a state of waking into a dark nightmare. The only problem was that it was only too real for the men subjected to his special treatment even as they stood in the menacing path of his projectiles. These are men with an ego to match their size and Gayle turned them into humiliated retrievers of the lost ball, disdainfully struck with his stinging willow.

In his 50th first class T20 outing, Gayle wasn’t off the blocks in a hurry – taking three balls to get off the mark before getting stuck into Ishwar Pandey to start his demolition with an over that cost twenty to Pune. Gayle plundered Mitchell Marsh for four sixes and a boundary – even taking a moment to catch his breath, allowing Marsh a dot ball in the middle of the mayhem – he still had his 50 accounted for in a mere 17 balls. The brutality of it all was only unfolding and Pune hadn’t yet completely unwrapped their gruesome package. In a move that can be best explained as spellbound foolishness, Aaron Finch decided to turn his left arm over immediately after Ali Murtaza was carted around for 17 from an over.

The decision paid off, albeit for Gayle, who took an immediate fondness for Finch’s harmless arsenal. The marauder unleashed himself into Finch with gay abandon, buttressing a double sandwich of sixes with a four in the middle sitting like a slice of cheese to ease the pain on the weary visage of the Victorian. Finch suffered a battering – 1,6,6,4,6,6 to own an unflattering accolade – the most expensive over of IPL season VI. You could not have blamed him for cursing himself at allowing that single to Dilshan off the first ball of that over, for he was a captain without a garment at the end of it, much like the anecdotal emperor in his new clothes. Finch was only trying to be a meaningful leader taking responsibility for his team, but Gayle swiped him out of the park like he didn’t belong in the team at all.

Gayle reached his thunderous hundred off the fifth ball of the ninth over, with a six that soared over the roof behind the hapless Ashok Dinda, who was busy kicking himself for offering it gift wrapped in a gentle full toss. Amazingly, the first strategic time out came after the storm had already sunk the Pune Warriors in a pond without a bank, with the water rising constantly. The only things their dugout might have offered at that stage was a little cajoling and commiseration, for the Gayle attack was beyond any strategy even if they had Joe Paterno on their bench. Meanwhile, the break did offer a few moments for Gayle to relish his own brilliance and soak up the grateful accolades from his mates.

As if satiated by that blazing hundred, Chris Gayle took his foot off the pedal to offer much needed respite to his already vanquished opponents. But only for a brief period of respite that lasted 15 balls over three overs, during which Gayle contented himself with a meagre collection of 16 runs. Little did the Warriors realise that the man from Kingston was only rejuvenating his muscles to launch into another brutal assault that would haul him and his team into an orbit not experienced hitherto by another individual or team. It was Murtaza again that was picked for special treatment in the 14th over, as Gayle got stuck into him to extract 26 runs of just five balls including three towering sixes and a couple of boundaries.

When the mayhem ended, Pune must have only been too relieved that this was a T20 game, for the murderer among them was still at large and there was no respite in sight. The final 50 had taken another 20 balls and it helped Royal Challengers snatch away the highest score in the format from Sri Lanka who had set a mark of 260, six summers ago in South Africa, over an equally shocked Kenyan outfit. Gayle had an impressive 175 not out off just 66 deliveries with 13 boundaries and 17 sixes etched against his name, every one of those runs embellished in gold, both in memory and in print. Brendon McCullum had given the IPL a rousing start with his 158 at the same venue, but it is now relegated to being a distant memory, as it may have already been in this era of instant gratification.

The rest of the match turned into a mere spectacle giving a little more time for everyone in the park to recount the tale, digest the brilliance and pinch themselves to ascertain that this was not merely a swing at an app on their handset but a real game of cricket. It didn’t matter so much that Pune Warriors lost, it was always a question of margin and the answer was an unflattering 130 runs. There was more than enough cushion for Gayle to almost settle into a couch and deliver that final over. Under the circumstances, it was only incidental that he rubbed more salt into the Warriors wounds by snagging a couple of wickets serenaded by an elaborate ceremony designed to please the reigning deity of T20 cricket.

It took nine years for Gayle to obliterate the mark set by Andrew Symonds, who butchered his way to a 34 ball hundred in 2004 whilst playing for Kent against Middlesex. It also took him over five years to go past the mark set by McCullum, but we can almost be certain that it might take considerably longer for another man to get past the sky high bar set by Gayle unless he decides to have a go at those numbers himself on another of these cheesy evenings. Lightning, they say, strikes only once. With Chris Gayle in the middle on a 22 yard strip, it strikes repeatedly in a rabid rush to leave his opponents in a shredded mess. T20 cricket is only still being defined, but the West Indian already has the patent on many of those definitions.