Where I’m at today, I’ve done everything to be here. Scored runs at all levels, straight up to the next level, score some more. Dominating whatever tournament I’ve played in. I’ve been scoring hundreds since a baby. A customary ting.
Yeah, I knew I was something special. Wherever I go I do well. But I work to be where I am today. Never did anyone say, ‘I like Chris Gayle, I’ll give him some opportunity, I’ll trust his ability.’
I had to perform and perform in the middle like no one else to make it. Why? Because of my background. Most people wouldn’t even recognize it like that, but that’s how it is. You come from somewhere nice, you speak well, your school carries a reputation, you get the chances. Your skin a nice light colour, you get the chances.
No one can say I was helped like that. Yet I delivered.
I was the kid who people said had no classical technique, who didn’t have the focus or drive to make it, whose attitudes to the game stank. And yet here I am today, still playing, one of the world-beaters in international cricket, and wondering what they’re saying now. And sometimes the same one who blocked your path and threw doubt upon you is praising you now, wanting to work with you now, wanting to talk to you.
Toughness comes from having to be tough. Determination to stick it out comes from doing it every day. Motivation comes from it always being fun, always being games.
You don’t survive in Rollington Town unless you’re tough. You don’t prosper at Lucas unless you have total commitment. You don’t keep coming back unless you love it.
The older guys might try to chase us off, but when they’re not here, the ground is our ground. Playing on concrete, the ball coming for your head, showing no fear. Yuh have to stand up to ’ard pace. Nobody wan’ fi get lick. Bowling at the big kids, them wanting to smoke you around to prove the ranking, having to bowl as hard and tricky as you can to win your right to play. If there are no gloves, you bat without gloves. If there is only one pad, you strap it to your front leg. If there are no pads, you trust your eyes. The sun might be hot and the sweat pouring. You still do it, because that’s where you have your fun.
Hey pickney! Yuh gonna get lick so ’ard!
You wonder why we’re competitive? It’s coming at us every day. St James Road against Portland Road. These games are cut-throat, because round here there’s always beef, always kids at it.
Sometimes it’s football. Street football we call scrimmage. Three-a-side, four-a-side, a league made up of the different street corners. You play intense. It can get dirty sometimes, and no one is surprised when a little fight breaks out here and there. We love the skills and the swagger. We play a game we call Shift: the man with the ball runs at his opponent, fools him with some crazy skill to leave him hanging, and everyone has a laugh at him.
Simple things, and such a joy. Ground Stroke is a version of cricket you can play with anything from two players to 20, in the street or on a patch of dirt, wickets or no wickets. One rule: hit the ball in the air, and you’re out. Perfect coaching, a perfect accident.
Wrong Stroke. Play the correct shot and you bat on. Play the wrong one – shape for a drive through cover but send it through mid-on, look like you want to pull in front of square but take it too fine – and a fielder can appeal. Majority decision then rules: if a Wrong Stroke is decreed, you’re out. The bowler becomes the batsman; the fielder who called Wrong Stroke, or the one who takes a catch if it’s a straightforward dismissal, becomes the bowler. Everyone wants to bat, so there’s always a hustle to get the ball. Fighting under catches, people calling Wrong Shot for all sorts, appealing like crazy men. Our love for the game, our skills and our tactics, grow with every battle.
We play hard on the street. No one ever backs down. No one ever goes home because you might be short of time or not have the space or gear to play it normally.
We play something we call Rankin Cup, named after a cousin of mine. We come over to Lucas evening time, we pick up two teams, look at the light left in the day and make a decision: ‘Oh-kay, dis one a Test, we play fi two nights, bat till you out . . . Oh-kay, this an ODI, twenty-five over a side.’ We will work down to 10 overs, five overs sometimes, to make it sharp. Night can catch you, but you want to get a contest in.
There are no umpires, for no one wants to stand around without a bat or ball in their hand or a chance of a catch or appeal. So decisions are mutual: lick it over the fence, you’re out; lbws, little snicks behind, majority decision. One man say hedge, two or tree say not out, yuh get di benefit.
I love to bat. I hate being out. Very little makes me angry, but getting out does. Tears are not unknown if I feel I’ve been sawn off and robbed. When I am given out too early, it makes me even more determined to fill my boots the next time. I’ll show them. Watch me now. Him full of heart, yuh can see. It plain on him, vex as hell.
It is all fun, all pure fun, but we understand there are real dangers all around. The big thing is to own a pair of Travel Fox trainers. I don’t. Mine have got ‘Montego Bay’ printed on them. The kids who do own them walk with their chins on their chests, looking down at their own feet with pride and wonder. You ain’t wearin’ Travel Fox, you ain’t wearin’ nuttin’. They would be better off looking around them, because Travel Fox are so prized that if you bump into the wrong person on the wrong street at the wrong time, they will take them off you. Pull a knife, pull a gun, goodbye shoes.
Shoes are the code. You see a man wearing Clarks shoes and your heart starts going, for Clarks shoes are not the geeky comfort as in Britain but the shoes of gangsters. You keep looking up. Diamond pattern socks. Ratchet knife in belt. Rag in back pocket, long-sleeve shirt over a mesh vest known as a merino, although there is no soft wool anywhere near it. This man is a bad man. He might have newspaper in his wallet to fill it out, but only a fool makes fun of him.
I’m lucky. Being recognized for sport gives you some sort of protection. No one wants to mess with you. But there are kids with knives all over, let alone the adults with guns. McGregor Gully, where Miss Hamilton lives. Jarrett Lane, a few minutes’ walk north up Mountain View Avenue. Jacques Road, a different gang, literally right across that narrow road.
In quiet times it simmers. Other time the pot explodes. Street turn against street. Guns, always lurking, come out to make hell. When the hell breaks loose, intersections and street corners become no-man’s-land, and bullets fly – potshots across streets, breeze-block getting pockmarked, ricochets off the fences. Schools get shut. You keep your head down and you watch where you step.
One gang to our west in Tivoli Gardens. Another east in the Wareika Hills. Nasty in Nannyville, two miles to the north of us by the National Stadium, on the doorstep of our secondary school. So some kids will carry knives to defend themselves on the way home. Others will flash guns and play the scary big man.
As small ones we had played shooting games round the Lucas pavilion, firing our pretend guns made from outfield clay. Boom boom boom! You catch a man in a target, he has to drop. You soak up your surroundings.
Kevin Murray, who goes to Rollington Town primary with me, bats at three or four to my opener and keeps wicket to my off breaks, loses three uncles to the gunfights. His father has to go into hiding; when he eventually returns to Kingston in our later teens, he can’t even come watch us play at Lucas in case he winds up with a bullet just like his brothers.
We all grow up in music. On Saturdays, when your mum goes to the market, the bashment party music is on the radio. You take your cassette, put it in the player, press play and record at the same time, and it is something beautiful.
We swap tapes between us and buy home-mixed cassettes on the streets. Using a pen and spinning the little wheels round to rewind it without burning up your batteries, long strings of unspooled tape blowing round the streets, tangled round trees. Bounty Killer sings ‘Warlord Walk’.
‘Nuh bwoy can chat when di Warlord walk/Fool caan chart when di Warlord talk/Place lock dun when di Warlord rock/Bomb juss when Warlord waan shot.
‘Tough like a stone that a Warlord heart/Shot bwoy dome dat a Warlord knack/Copper plus chrome dat Warlord pack/Tell mi, gunshot when Warlord want.’
Then, when the darkness passes, it will settle. A truce will be called. The rival sound systems that supply the music for the bashment, often run by strongmen to make themselves money, will call a peace dance, and neighbours will be back to being neighbours again, at least until the next time.
Sometimes you can avoid trouble. Sometimes you can’t.
Lucas was a club formed to give poor black men a chance. When the first players came together in Kingston at the end of the nineteenth century, club cricket in Jamaica was organized and played only by whites. Lucas opened its arms and changed that, and changed the perception of what black cricketers could do: within three years of being granted entry into the Senior Cup in 1901, the club had won it, and would win the next two too. That’s 17 Senior Cups we’ve bagged now, 10 Test players we’ve produced for the West Indies.
But poor black men still have battles to fight. I have captained every team I’ve played for, all the way up – primary school, high school. Him a natural leader. I’ve won a few trophies. As I come into the Jamaica youth team in my teens the expectation is the same. Big brother Andrew in the side in 1995, my old Kensington friend Wavell Hinds in 1996, me being groomed by the coach, Roy McLean, another Kensington stalwart who can see quality in a particular player, for the 1997 tournament in Guyana.
But already there are stories about me floating around. I’m the laziest player in the camp. I’ve got the worst technique. A man called Lynden Wright, who will go on to become president of the Jamaica Cricket Association, is the team manager. We’re now good friends, and we joke on each other, but he is a strict man who loves rules. Tuck your shirt in. No flip-flops. No earrings. I find it tough, because it’s not me or where I come from. I try to abide by most of the rules, even the ridiculous ones, but I’ll still get picked on. Before one match he stands watch outside the team hotel and catches eight of us coming back late. The next morning only I am dropped from the starting XI.
On the outside I say nothing. On the inside I think if this was an important game, yuh ain’t runnin’ dat. I still do my job. I still play flat-out. But I know I am being judged on my background. On where I come from.
The Jamaica youth team captaincy comes up. I’m ready for it. I’m the leader, the main man, the one the team want.
It doesn’t happen. Instead they give it to a kid named Llewellyn Meggs – nice kid, but he isn’t a player, and he isn’t a leader. He will go on to play just four first-class games for the island, average 21 with the bat and fail to take a wicket. Nice kid, wrong man.
The selectors know he isn’t the man to captain the team, but they go for him all the same. Judged on your background, on where you come from. There are schools in Jamaica that have the reputation and the influence – Campion College, Wolmer’s, St George’s and Kingston College. If you go to Excelsior, some people will look down on you. They’ll think you can’t be a bright person. And if your skin is not as light-coloured as your rival’s, they’ve got the biggest advantage of all over you.
It seems extreme, but this is what happens. If you check the history of it, of who is captain at those representative levels, it often comes down to the lightness of your skin colour and your school.
It’s not just me. A lot of players suffer in youth cricket for that same reason. The best talent is from the lower schools and the countryside, but the background and the assumptions keep killing it. Dem poor ones ’ave to fight ’arder.
Kids from the posh schools already have the advantages – the equipment, the facilities, the funds. And since those schools also have big names as ex-students, they can prosper from that legacy too. As a kid from the tastier part of town you have to be exceptional, to perform outstandingly in the trials to get picked, because the selectors know their favourites.
A lot of talent I’ve seen heartbroken. A lot of kids who should have made it but couldn’t, and so changed their minds from cricket. Out there in the wilderness now, doing nothing. Some of them bring cause on themselves, but too many super talents they let slip away. These years on, I’m still angry about it.
Sometimes you can avoid trouble, sometimes you can’t. The blackness of my skin I expect to be an issue in Jamaica, but I experience it across the cricketing world.
In Australia, going out. Never a player on the field, but going to a nightclub, and you hear it – ‘You black bastard . . .’ Then it will come again – ‘Nigger . . .’
You just keep moving. It’s not spoiling my night. I’m out to have fun. I’ll go somewhere else. But you can see it in the stares sometimes. The stares mean no good.
Sometimes in England, they won’t even let you into a club. They will find some excuses – those shoes aren’t allowed, that shirt is wrong. Always an excuse. It doesn’t make sense to fight over what you can’t handle. There are plenty more clubs to go to. You venture on.
‘Jus’ breathe. Get out in the air and breathe. Breathe an’ let the stress an’ anger go. You can’t live in the darkness . . .’
I use those things as motivation. Some crumble under it. It gives me extra drive. You want to prove those people wrong.
Just the same as sniping and slating of your technique. Maybe you have to be criticized to excel. You definitely have to be able to use it.
They used to look at Viv Richards’ famous front-foot flick to leg, playing right across his pad.
‘What happens if you miss it?’
‘I ain’t missing it, man. It’s in the stands . . .’
I had already played Test matches and Test series when someone high up in West Indies cricket decided I should step down to the ‘A’ team that was touring England. ‘Your technique needs the help. You can’t play the swinging ball. You won’t score any runs.’ This to a batsman who will average 50 in his first series there, who will average 52 in one-day internationals on English grounds against English swing bowlers.
The guy with the conventional technique is seldom the one who excels. The men who have changed cricket in my lifetime are the mavericks: King Vivi, Shane Warne, Virender Sehwag, Murali.
Sometimes you have to leave people alone, work with what they have, guide them along the line of their strength. Don’t try to change them, because that’s how they get here. Celebrate what they have rather than moaning what they don’t have. If the sight of it doesn’t please you, please yourself. Ask any Test batsman in the world: you rather make a pretty 30 or an ugly century? Then search the scorebooks. There’s no asterisk next to an innings and a note saying ‘This one a pretty hundred’ or ‘This one an ugly one.’
The strong mind is what allows you to score big runs and dismantle big attacks, not the perfect front elbow or the back-lift that points straight to second slip or a stance that match a manual from the times when Queen Victoria is on the throne and wickets are mowed by grazing sheep.
The determination to deliver. Being ready to endure whatever it takes to get the job done. Using those barbs to spur you on. Then you will make it, no matter what they put in your way. Trus’ mi.
Am I ready when the call comes? In some ways yes, in others still raw.
Picked as a reserve for the West Indies squad at the under-19 World Cup, I open the batting in the Plate final and stroke an unbeaten 141 in the team’s total of 243 all out. Cricket all day, all night; this is what you get from it.
The senior West Indies team, the actual men, Brian Lara and Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, the true heroes, are in Canada playing a triangular one-day series against India and Pakistan. They’ve just arrived from another competition in Singapore, so they are rotating squad members. I’m still not expecting to answer my phone to this: ‘Chris, you have to come to Toronto.’ Whaat?
When you dream about your West Indies debut, you dream about Sabina Park or Lord’s or the MCG. You don’t dream about the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club. Dreams can wait for another dawn. I’m excited just to be flying.
Jump on a plane, land in the evening darkness. As I reach the hotel, I see a couple of the senior players heading out.
I’ve brought my Lucas chat and confidence. ‘Yow! Weh yuh a go?
‘Inna town.’
‘Oh-kay, gimme two minute, I tro’ mi bag an’ com’ . . .’
We start in the bars, we take in a proper nightclub, we continue at a strip club. This is my first night with the West Indies team, and nobody is stopping me, nobody says anything. They seem happy for me to go and party, so I shrug and think, ‘Good times!’
You see the big guns, Curtly and Courtney and Brian Charles Lara. I don’t fool around in those corners. I stay in my range – Wavell Hinds, Sherwin Campbell. And they say, ‘Okay youngster, com’ have a beer an’ chill.’ So you smile, and you kick on, and you start to get in the groove, in the limelight, and girls start to flock you. An’ those sorta tings.
Now normally a youngster shouldn’t do that. You’re just reaching land. I’m trying to be natural and play my own style, not knowing what lies ahead, not understanding the eyes now on me, but international cricket is a total different scenario. What you might get away with playing for Lucas, or Jamaica, at the next level it bites you.
And I get bitten. First game, India the opponents, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly in their ranks. I’m too thrilled just being there. There is a big crowd and there is a lot of noise, although for sure there aren’t a lot of West Indians. I get sent to field out on the boundary, and I’m not a person to field on the boundary, but everything is different. I try signing autographs to look like the cool man. Except my hands are trembling so much I can’t write my name. I’ve been practising my signature since I was 14 years old, and now I’m blowing it. A fan looks at me dismissively: ‘You can’t even sign properly!’
I get sent in at four. I last eight balls and score one run before Robin Singh bowls me. He also bowls Brian Lara for two, but Brian Lara is already the greatest batsman in the world, so no consolation.
Next game, sent in at four again. Fifteen runs this time, including my first international boundary, before Ganguly pins me lbw. Next game, seven off 22 balls.
So dis di top, yeah?
Dropped down to seven when we play Pakistan, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis coming in like runaway trains. Six runs in 15. Next match, Shabbir Ahmed bowling flat-out and swinging the old ball round corners, me reaching out for my first delivery, reaching out . . . Clatter. Mi off stump mebbe still travellin’ now . . .
It’s not all gloom and golden ducks. Sharing a dressing-room wide-eyed with Curtly and Courtney, I think I’ve got connections. Me and Curtly born on the same day, 21 September, Courtney another kid out of Excelsior High School. One bowling from either end, Chris Gayle as first slip, waiting for an edge. I take a few, I drop a few, but they don’t moan or glare. I love being around them. Ambrose is fun – the way he talks, the expressions he pulls. Sometimes when you look forward to something too hard it can be disappointing when it comes. Not playing with those two.
Against Pakistan, Lara comes over and says, ‘You opening the bowling.’ So I bowl the first over with my darting off spin, and ah, what a beautiful ball! The best delivery Saeed Anwar will ever get in his life. Pitches on middle and leg, hits off stump, plays all round it. Beauty. Prappa prappa beauty. And then I get a young man’s revenge against Ganguly – snagged in the giant hands of Carl Hooper at cover. You get a few big fish early, you start to enjoy life on the high seas.
I’m a kid, not yet out of my teens. Most great careers start slow. Master Blaster Viv made four and three in his first Test. Graham Gooch went for a pair of ducks. A lot of guys who score hundreds on their debut fade away.
And yet I know. It’s a weak start, and I have so much to learn. I’m barely aware of what I’m getting involved in. I’ll end up learning the hard way, and it’ll be very good for me. It will make me think about working even harder, rather than just doing the parties and having fun. But oh, I do so much love those parties! Sometime after the games, sometime before the games. Yuh do sum tings . . .
On to Sharjah for a series against Pakistan and Sri Lanka. I’m batting down. My Jamaica team-mate Nehemiah Perry, known me since knee-high, walks up to captain Lara.
‘Lissen, sen’ Chris to bat early man, him an opener!’ In my mind I’m thinking, ‘Whoah, didn’t he see the fast bowlers out there? Shoaib Akhtar, fastest ever, Mohammad Akram slick and fast, Shabbir Ahmed, swing and fast, Abdul Razzaq rapid on his own?’ I try to mouth at Perry – ‘Lissen mi – shut up. Shut up!’
Lara nods. ‘Okay, I’ll try him.’ So they send me to bat at three, and now this feels more like it despite the heat and the pace, getting a good start, a couple of boundaries, into the 20s, quick quick quick. Then I get out, but I know now I can live in this world, and so do they. Batting early, building it, building it.
And so, that spring, the Test team calls. Time to fly to Trinidad. Time to jump the next fence.
Zimbabwe are waiting in Port-of-Spain, and I feel ready. I’ve been scoring big runs for Jamaica, I’ve had my taste against India and Pakistan. The start of a new beginning, a fresh maroon cap in my hand, seven Jamaicans in the squad, me and Wavell Hinds making our Test debuts. The next kid from Lucas to represent the West Indies; I can be the next person out of the community and club to excel, the next one to show those left behind that they can still escape too.
People can’t travel to watch, because it costs and we’re pretty much laid back; we’re not going to be fussy. Tests in Jamaica will come. But parents are all happy, your friends are all glued to the TV, even if Kevin Murray will get smashed on cheap whisky in all the excitement and spend his best mate’s Test debut asleep on the toilet.
You have to be humble in the dressing-room. You’re a youngster, so you hold your corner and stay quiet. What you want to learn, you ask. I’m a person who gets on well with everybody, and I don’t step on anyone’s toes.
You also have to be a big man. You give respect, you get it. Everybody wish you well, and they know the type of player I am. Jus’ go out dere an’ do your ting. Do what you’ve been doing to get here.
I’m batting three but I’m striding to the crease in the first over after Adrian Griffith is lbw to Heath Streak. Nervous and excited at the same time, but when I stand in my stance and the first ball comes down – ooooh, I’m seeing it so big, and I’m hitting it so sweet, and here comes the confidence, and here come the runs . . .
A four, a four, another four. The ball seems huge and slow and my bat keeps crashing it away. Four. Four. Sherwin Campbell at the other end, a big grin on his face. Four.
A tickle off the pads. A shout from the other end. ‘YES!’
What? There’s no single there, Sherwin, but by the time I think that he’s halfway down the wicket and I’m halfway down the wicket and I hate to run, but I’m running now, and the ball is fizzing past me and it’s in the bowler’s hands and there go the stumps, and there goes the umpire’s finger . . .
I walk back to the dressing-room, and I cry like a baby. The most painful moment of my cricketing career, run out for 33. Run out when I was in the sweet groove, run out when I am certain, from the way I’m seeing the ball and the way it’s going to the ropes, that I’m going to score a century.
With my off-spin darts I take three wickets in Zimbabwe’s reply. Heath Streak then shuts down my celebration by bowling me for a golden duck in our second innings. Curtly and Courtney, aided by the third quick, Franklyn Rose, take their own revenge in bowling out Streak and his team-mates for just 63 when they need only 99 to take the win.
Already I was working it out. Be hungrier. Don’t be satisfied with a 30 or 40. Set yourself to get some runs. Fill your boots, and prepare to be weary – hours in the outfield, get up in the morning and field again, then six overs in the night to bat, straight away the new ball coming at you.
I know what it is like. There will be times when I am dropped, when I have to fight again to get back in, but I am used to fighting. I will get injuries, and I will have to battle, but I am used to the battle. I will wake up and put the work in again, but when did I ever not?
I’m not taking this second chance for granted. I’m not blowing the escape. Yuh gonna cement dis spot. That’s what I think, and that’s what I will do.
And I learn one more thing, one thing from the streets of east Kingston. When a fast bowler come for you, sometime it’s like shooting a gun. You have to control your breathing, or else your hands will be moving up and down. So sometime when the fast bowler comes I literally stop my breath. For those split seconds, the body virtually closes down. Everyting still. Control your breathing. Jus’ feel.
See your target, and just feel.