Posted by The worth of a Twenty20 player cannot be measured via a single innings. That’s a mistake many people make – they confuse aberrations with excellence. It’s therefore worth underlining the sheer inevitability that it would be Chris Gayle who would break the record for the highest individual score in the shortest format.
It doesn’t actually matter all that much that he was facing Ishwar Pandey, Ali Murtaza and even an over from Aaron Finch (although Luke Wright’s four overs for 26 look pretty fine in this context). Whoever was bowling, it takes phenomenal ability to hit 30 of the 66 balls you face for boundaries. As a child, we never once managed it when bowling a tennis ball to ourself via the wall of the garage and we were bowling underarm and umpiring as well.
Gayle finished with 175 not out, having hit 13 fours and 17 sixes in another good advert for his core strength. His team, Royal Challengers Bangalore, won. You may well have guessed that last bit.
This must rank as one of the top 5,000 innings in all of cricket (*), along with that time in Bangladesh when he was 4th top scorer with 24.
(*) I’m exaggerating.
Chris Gayle’s shirt number is 333. Don’t reckon he’ll change it to 175.
Maybe not, but he might change it to KingFisher Volkswagen HeroHonda 333.
This was such a special innings, it’s almost a shame that it took place in an atmosphere of such hyperbole as exists in the IPL – they’d probably run out of superlatives after the fifth ‘DLF Maximum’.
I think the word ‘phenomenal’ is appropriate here.
No more DLF Maximums! Danny Morrison can cream himself to Yes Bank Maximums instead…
In all seriousness, that was the best innings I’ve ever watched. Granted there have been many more important innings, but that appealed to my love of the OTT virtuoso.
Showing my age/lack of recent IPL-watching there. I’m SO 2008…
The new deals only started this season. I had hoped that their desire to be worse than Americans at having sponsors everywhere might have calmed, but sadly not.
Danny Morrison still seems under the impression that a six isn’t a boundary. Gayle would have been knackered yesterday running them all…
I enjoyed the commentary, mostly. They were sufficiently impressed to call some shots sixes, instead of yes banks, which was a nice start. And there was a suitable amount of giggling from the back of the box as various pundit’s masterplans for removing Gayle were emphatically proved wrong.
Yet barely he barely registers in the aftermath of Brendan Nash’s lightning 50 last week.
He looked about 8 feet tall and his bat looked about a foot wide. They ALL apart from Wright bowled length at him. I got
numb watching it. So did Alan Donald.
I didn’t see it (work, pah), but it is typical Gayle to go for the red ink rather than throw caution to the wind late in the innings.
Just think what the team score (and indeed his personal score) might have been had he played with reckless abandon.
Even theist ardent IPL cynic can’t possibly have watched that innings and failed to have a little chuckle. It was ridiculous. He even had time to slow it down and take a few singles in the middle overs.
That should have been “the most”
And here I thought you were classing up the place with subtle theological musings.
You are nothing but a big fat disappointment, Sam.
I think it says quite a lot that you had to remind everyone who he plays for at the end there.
I’ve watched dozens of IPL matches and I honestly didn’t know.