IPL 2022 braces for lull after Gayle storm
KOLKATA: Chris Gayle isn’t part of the Indian Premier League (IPL). He is also 42. The body has long stopped being fit for proper cricket, leg-stump lines make him cagey in the first few overs, his aversion to running between the wickets is legendary and the less said about fielding the better. But would he have gone unsold at this weekend’s auction? We will never know.
When it’s Christopher Henry Gayle, nothing is impossible. Maybe the tiring prospect of spending two months in biobubble got to him. Or maybe he is just done with cricket. We know he wanted a Jamaica farewell but the solitary T20I against Ireland in January was called off due to the pandemic. So this self-imposed hiatus feels like a final goodbye.
It’s the end of an era, a subculture really. No one dominated the T20 format like Gayle. No one entertained like him as well. That IPL would go on to become Gayle’s turf was unthinkable after a series of paltry scores with Kolkata Knight Riders who had bought him in 2008 at a bumper $800,000—and equally indifferent international form.
The nadir of his career came soon enough at the 2011 auction when Gayle went unsold. Until Dirk Nannes was injured, prompting Royal Challengers Bangalore to seek a replacement. The rest, as they say, is history.
What made Gayle such a giant of the game? T20 can be an exacting format where basic skills don’t cut it anymore. There are three types of bouncers, four types of yorkers, five variations of slower balls and 101 ways of playing the innocuous fourth-stump away-moving delivery.
But season after season, Gayle continued to keep it simple. Defend or attack, nothing in between. Maybe watch the first few balls, get a feel of the pitch and get your eye in. And then launch into the shots. Brute force was one way to go. Gayle’s imposing height and top heavy torso facilitated that more and more towards the end. But it was also about picking the right ball.
What really separated Gayle from the rest though was his nerve—he didn’t have one. Either that or he did a really good job of hiding it. In a game that essentially hinges on who
first, Gayle often winked his way to imposing, impossible scores.
The difference
The only difference between the Gayle of 2012 and now is the fuse has become slightly longer. Take his 175* against Pune Warriors (in 2013) for instance.
First ball, Bhuvaneshwar Kumar aimed at his pads but Gayle clipped it to midwicket. Dot. Next ball was a peach, moving just a hint to beat Gayle’s edge. Another dot. Third ball and this time Gayle got off the mark with a gentle prod towards mid-off. That’s it.
Seven years later, when Gayle hit 99 against Rajasthan Royals, all he took was five dots to start his innings. Gayle’s was a foolproof way of approaching T20—defending long enough till he was absolutely sure of the next 10, 20 or even 30 balls. But with time it may have turned obsolete as other batters started giving more bang
for the buck, and off a wider range of shots.
Always more reliant on hand-eye coordination, Gayle knew his reflexes were slowing. Injuries mounted as well. It started affecting his consistency and he started getting dropped from the eleven.
After a point in time, Gayle became superfluous to requirements. No franchise will ever admit to it but Gayle’s marketability was one of the reasons he kept finding a team. In the 2018 auction, Kings XI Punjab almost reluctantly picked him up at his base price. And Gayle thanked them by winning a couple of matches by himself.
There are no free lunches in the IPL. But Gayle always made and lived by his own rules. He has six IPL hundreds but could have easily scored four more. Cricket defined him but Gayle didn’t let the game define him. Power hitter, cricket’s first true freelancer, life of a party, Universe Boss, Gayle was everything and more.