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Where do you go for your right to reply these days? Instagram, apparently.
Chris Gayle made a 12-ball fifty in the Big Bash this week and as ever with sportsmen, you get the impression he thinks this proves his fundamental rightness about everything; like he could napalm an orphanage but it wouldn’t be wrong if he got crucial runs at a decent lick the following day.
He doesn’t say that explicitly, but that’s the vibe.
“My idol & the person who I look up to and also want to be like when growing up as a kid is in the picture” he begins – about a picture of himself. After that, he thanks a load of people, including ‘the haters’ – a term which pretty much always signposts unrepentant wrongdoing.
After bemoaning all the players who smiled in front of his face but didn’t publicly stand up for him (it’s because they didn’t really support you, Chris), it’s on to the people he doesn’t thank – principally Andrew Flintoff, Chris Rogers and Shane Watson, in that order.
“The past cricketer who say I make myself look like a chop, the other who claim I was no good to the youngsters while playing for the thunder, the next one who said he expect that sort of behavior from Chris – Y’all can kiss my ‘Black Rass'”
That counts as a slamming, right? We’ve always wanted to use ‘slams’ in a headline.
Nobody’s ever told him that a talented prick is still a prick, then.
Also his team still lost.
I’m pretty sure he couldn’t care less about that.
About which? Or about both?
The latter. I’m pretty sure Gayle would trade a win for a personal batting record any day of the week.
To be clear, not the latter in your latter comment, the latter in your former comment.
‘The latter’ refers to the former in your latter comment and the latter in your former comment.
As Carrie Fisher said the other week, youth is not an accomplishment. Gayle is 36, and might have another four years of being the greatest person ever. But the problem for people who build their entire ego on what-they-can-do-in-a-sport is that when the brilliance stops, as it must, they have nothing left. This is hard enough for sportsmen with friends, but for Gayle it is going to be a catastrophe. His idol & the person who he looks up to and also wants to be like when growing up as a kid will be the only person still hanging around.
Meanwhile, Stuart Broad
His idol and the person who he looked up to and also wanted to be like when growing up as a kid will be gone actually; a young man who can never return to replace the old ‘back in my day’ rambling sociopath who will have replaced him.
I would be interested to see how many of Gayle’s dozens of domesticT20 teams have actually won anything with him in the side.
The #worldboss crap actually makes me feel a bit sick, especially when the mindless masses slurp up to him. As you mention, I fear for what sort of state he will be in when he is 45 and irrelevant.
As for Broad “”It might sound odd, but I’m not the best bowler in the world.” might be my favourite statement ever.
We always gave Gayle the benefit of the doubt and assumed the World Boss stuff was tongue in cheek. His recent spell in Australia has been persuading us otherwise.
I’m with KC on this one, as is Daisy, with the change of mind occurring around the same time.events.
Of course we all sort of knew what Gayle was, but the “fun/folly of youth/light beer humour” has mostly evaporated and left a rather creepy, sticky mess of bad jokes in its place.
Oh lighten up guys, Gayle is fun – life is meant to be fun. He is entertaining and takes cricket to people that may not have had an interest otherwise. How he fares in retirement I couldn’t give two hoots about but just relax for a teeny weany moment.
It’s a comparison that has never and probably will never be made again but view him alike to Jeremy Corbyn. Yes they’re clearly both complete fools (and tools) but they’re entertaining, clearly not serious and take their respective fields to a wider audience.
I find it pretty difficult to find anyone who displays rampant sexism “fun”. And I voted for Corbyn in the Labour Leadership thingy.
His cricket can of course be “fun” without him being so (separation of “art” and “artist”), but that gives him even less reason to use his cricketing success to patch over his other failures.
Gayle, I mean, not Corbyn; although I’m sure the latter could have bowled a mean military medium back in his day.
Corbyn’s medium pace would not be military medium; it would be pacific medium.
militant medium, rather.
Art versus artist. As we say in the article, the batting doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of it.
The batting IS fun. We enjoy the batting. It’s just that as he gets older, the batting seems to be becoming a less and less important part of the ‘package’ and the other stuff’s looming into view to fill the void.
The other stuff’s not fun. Tongue in cheek and knowing, it could be fun, but we really don’t think it is any more. It’s just cocky self-absorption and it’s unsettling to see him rewarded for that.