You think you know me for my cricket. You might also think you know me for the girls. So lissen mi. Let me handle this.
Doh judge mi. Jamaica is not the same as England or Australia. We’re more relaxed about sex. We’re not so hung up about it. This is what people like doing. It’s no big deal.
I’m a natural with the bat in hand. I grow and discover I can just find the middle of the bat every time I swing. And so it becomes with girls. I didn’t learn from watching some older guy or trying to imitate anyone, it just comes naturally as you grow.
Everybody wants to have a good time. Some people want to have it easy ways, some people want it the longer route. And you’ve got to be careful out there, because not everyone talks to you for the right reason. If you’re smart you’ll pick up on these things, but you have to learn from your experiences. You have to know the game, just as in the middle. You have to know your opponent’s moves. What’s this bowler trying to do? How can he get you?
The pitches you play on are different. When you’re chatting up a girl on Jamaican soil it’s very different to chatting up an English girl.
You know instinctively when a lady’s into you. And you know when she wants to listen to you. A woman who doesn’t want to listen to you will just get up and leave. Once they stick around, they’re interested.
Sometimes I wear my hair in braids. With girls, it doesn’t matter about the braids. Dyamn, they look at my baby face and my eyes, they don’t get as far as the hair.
That’s why I always wear dark glasses. They say, ‘Cyaan Chris tek dem off?’
I say, ‘Lissen, if you look in my eyes, it game over.’
They protest it. ‘No way, no way, no way.’
I say, ‘Lissen mi. I tek it off, it game over.’
‘Yeah? Oh-kay – try me try me try me!’
Glasses up. ‘Ooop! Oh my Gaad! It true!’
‘Whoops, too late, you get caught! See? Yuh lookin’ trouble!’
Sometimes now I have to play the leave-alone game. A nice juicy half-volley pitched up on off stump and you take a step towards it, head still as always, hands coming down, and then at the last moment pulling the bat out of the way. Leave alone. Well bowl mate. Cyatch yuh next time! Com’ here again I hit yuh bowling all over!
It’s up to you what shot you play. Don’t hate me just because I’m not what you want me to be. Don’t hate me because I’m not who you are. It’s just me, you know?
We grow up pretending to know more than we do. There is a game we play when we are 11 or 12 called Dolly House. Dalli-Ooos. Kids across Jamaica have played it for ever; it’s when boys and girls fool around before they know what fooling around is, hanging out together, starting to get curious, not really knowing what there is to be curious about.
On the same little derelict plot where the trees grow tall and we creep in with our bingie slingshots to hunt birds for breakfast, the grass is long and thick. It’s so dense you can make dens in there, little green rooms where you stamp down the fronds and lie there on your own, all quiet and no one bother you.
A girl invites you in. You invite a girl. And when you’re in there you experiment. What’s this? What does that do? We know nothing about sex, and this is nothing like sex. It’s a fumble here and a fumble there, winding up like we know the bigger kids do, pretending we’re expert at what we’re not. We call it dugu dugu, because there’s a track by a dancehall artist, Dave Kelly, called ‘Dugu Dugu Riddim’ and it’s on all our bashment tapes, and everyone is singing it and dancing to it.
‘Beneat’ the star (me wan’ dugu dugu)/An inna me car (me wan’ dugu dugu)/’Pon da wall (me wan’ dugu dugu)/From wi small (me wan’ dugu dugu)/All inna me room (me wan’ dugu dugu)/All ’pon de roof (me wan’ dugu dugu)/Rockin’ chair (me wan’ dugu dugu)/With foot inna air (me wan’ dugu dugu) . . .’
Our friend Fanny-Boy – you remember, his mother’s name was Fanny – is our bank. He always has small change when we have none, so he will buy us all snacks – biscuits, suck-suck drinks, crust and cheese from Lecky’s. The snacks go into the long grass with the girls, but Fanny-Boy will not follow. At first we think he’s shy, but lots of us are shy, and we still go in to see what the fuss about.
Weeks go past. ‘Dugu Dugu Riddim’ is across the radio. Fanny-Boy still hasn’t followed his biscuits. ‘Com’ Fanny-Bwoy. Wah mek yuh scare?’
Eventually, after much huffing and puffing, he agrees to go in. Biscuits in one hand, suck-suck in other. We wait outside. Silence. Minutes roll by. Then a commotion, a thrashing of the grass and Fanny-Boy shoots out of there like marble from a bingie.
‘Fanny-Bwoy! Fanny-Bwoy! Wah gwaan?’
He runs past screaming. ‘Na! Na go! Dat ting! It have teet’!’
As we grow Fanny-Boy is persuaded those things do not actually have teeth, and we start to find out what we can and can’t do. I’m very shy around the girls, just as I’m quiet at home and watchful at school. I’m more into my cricket. I don’t talk to girls much, I’ll just observe. And then I observe that silence sometime seems to work just as well as the brash boys and the big mouths, because when you do say something, you have their attention and they will listen to you. ‘Oh, I didn’t know you could talk!’
Then I find the cricket reputation helps. First year at Excelsior High School, first day. Our form teacher, Mr Haynes, is telling us all where to sit. A girl called Trudy goes up to him. ‘Sir, I want to sit next to Christopher.’ She gets her way, which is bad news only for Kevin Murray and Popeye and Garrick and the rest of the boys, because Trudy is a girl who can make a shy boy blush.
It moves on. A Pro League is set up in the country, where each club is allowed to include a couple of overseas talents as well as the best Jamaica can offer. Batting for Lucas, I come up against an attack with riches all over: Kensington express-man Patrick Patterson, West Indies quick Patterson Thompson, Laurie Williams, who plays ODIs with him, Jamaica fast bowler Kirk Powell and two leggies who also represent the nation. And I take them for a century, and I’m the talk of the town, and suddenly even big women want a piece of a young boy.
From now on there is always the ladies’ eyes on me, always ’ere and dere about, and that will never stop. My eyes are opened to new things. In Jamaica we start everything at a younger age, because hardships force you to grow up fast, but there are compensations.
I am 16 the first time. I am in a go-go club, and she is a stripper from Guyana. I’m nervous, but I feel the pressure to get some experience, to break my duck and get off the mark.
You pay some money, she takes her clothes off. This much I know. I tip her. We start talking. We have a few drinks, and I make a discovery: sometimes they like you a lot, and you’re good to go. Ya man. If they like you, you’re good.
She is older than me by far. ‘This is your first time?’
‘Erm, yeah.’ In a little shy voice. ‘Yeah . . .’
Will I be a natural at this too? Not on this first trip to the crease. We do our ting and so forth, a few false shots and edges, few more thick edges into the pads. But it’s good fun, and I start to find some form, and in my head I’m a legend, and the legend is starting to work! An’ the legend work work, an’ the legend get a riddim and jus’ work work work . . .
And then, boom! Legend is . . . out! Innings over! Gone for a quick 28, lots of boundaries, no staying power, wave goodbye to the crease.
Oh, my knees are weak. Mi body get weak out! Then I fall asleep like a baby, at least until she wakes me up. Whaat! I’m a man now? ‘Yuh wan’ gwaan again?’
Life changes. Cricket is still the obsession, but it has competition. Playing under-19 cricket for Jamaica, I start opening with a crazy kid from the sticks called Leon Garrick.
He is a superstitious boy. The night before a match he insists we go to the movies together, because he believes that if we go to the movies together we make runs together the next day. He also likes to party. We make a good pair, because both of us are shy with girls, have no money to buy clothes and have no money to buy drinks. We can’t even get into the places we want to get into, not least for those reasons, but against logic each of us still acts like a gyalis, a ladies’ man. Playboys in borrowed shirts, playboys in your big brother’s shoes.
And it’s fun. Opening for Jamaica together, runs starting to flow. Getting into the nightclubs whose doors open because of those runs. Easing into the party groove, starting to find girls, starting to convince them that we’re not penniless kids from the country or Rollington Town but somehow men with the world wanting to welcome them in.
Beenie Man is on the sound systems, singing about the girls and sugar, how he’s a world-class lover, and these girls we see are like sugar, even if we’re not yet the rest of it.
You take back girls to your room. Sometimes you have to say to your roomie, ‘Hey roomie, need a likkle ’arf an hour.’ And roomie say, ‘Oh-kay, do yuh ting man.’ Sometimes you can have a difficult room-mate who will never move, and you might just have to improvise.
On and on. You’re now partying all the time. Leon is a good wingman, and I’m a good talker. Still shy, but with a couple of shots of Hennessy out comes Flamboyance Gayle. Shot a ’ennessy, boss di dancefloor.
The way I’ll talk and come across, I’ll be rude and sweet at the same time, and girls seem to just gravitate to it. A woman loves a compliment. They love to hear how good they look. I learned that early. Just spill it out. You see some men thinking exactly as men. It’s not, ‘You want a car, baby?’ Simple likkle tings. Think as a woman. Counsel them. Pay attention to them, and you’re good to go.
In my later days, if a girl throws herself at me, I’m not interested. Too easy, no fun. When you’re young, anything comes, you go. You have so much energy. It’s all new. It’s all an adventure. Enjoyment everywhere you look.
My first tour to England comes in 2000. I’m not playing in many games, so I can have some fun. And what a nice experience! I’ll be in the club and buy a bottle of champagne, and the girls will just come over to you. Party animals, in every town from Worcester to Cardiff to Nottingham to Leeds. If they like you, they’re coming for you. If a girl wants you, there’s nothing stopping her from getting you. That’s how it goes.
The Port Authority back in Kingston pay for me and a few other young talents – Daren Ganga, Jermaine Lawson, Ramnaresh Sarwan – to spend the winter at the Australian Cricket Academy in Henley Beach, Adelaide. The cricket is fantastic – very intense, very well organized. Rod Marsh runs it with a firm hand. With me in the ranks are future Aussie skipper Michael Clarke and his long-time team-mates Shane Watson and Nathan Hauritz.
The social life is extraordinary. My first time Down Under, and what an experience. At no point do I go out looking for any woman. They look for me.
I walk into a club and I get my arse pinched. ‘Whaat! Who did that?’ And then you see a girl just wink at you. Me thinking, ‘Is this for real?’
I go to the bar, and the bartender brings my drink before I order one, points to the other end of the bar and says, that lady over there sent it to you. ‘Whaat? Is this serious?’ Andre Richards with me, both of us whistling in shock. ‘Is this what Australia is like?’
We don’t work it out until later, but it seems a lot of girls in Australia have something for the dark-skinned guy. I’m standing there scratching my head. If you are talking to one girl and she goes to the bathroom, the next one come take her place. They cyaan slip up!
Girls buying you drinks, girls pinching your arse. You feel like you’re playing a game – eeny-meeny-miney-mo.
We’re staying in academy accommodation, so you can’t take girls back. Rod’s rules. So you have to go where the girl is going. They’ll even come pick you up from the academy, which is fine until morning comes, and you don’t know where you are in this new city. Time to hustle. Time to get back quickly. Oversleeping, running into the street whistling as loud as you could. ‘TAXI!’ Me and Jermaine Lawson, waking up in the same house, different bedrooms, different girls, me having to wake him up, him dead to the world.
Sometimes the sun will come up and it will be aw, man . . . But it is all such fun. And the girls want to have even more fun than we do.
Leon Garrick and I and adventure just go together. We’re an odd couple; me from the big city, him from the backwoods, me tall and skinny, him short and muscles. He can’t sit still, I don’t like to run, but things happen.
We’ll be at Sabina Park, playing for Jamaica. I’ll be on the pavilion balcony, feet up, hearing his footsteps. He’ll be walking towards you, and then without any warning he’ll just jump over the balcony. As you come off your chair like a man on a bungee he’ll turn in mid-air, grab back on to the railings and hang there by his fingertips, laughing at you. Trus’ mi. He a skill man. Super super skill. Unbelievable.
A training camp at Sabina Park, all staying the night there. The joke has been running that when someone is asleep, someone else will fill a bucket of water, sneak up and drench him. So far, so average. When it’s Leon Garrick’s turn to do something, he takes it to balcony-jumping levels – stealing the groundsman’s hose, turning it on strong, putting it through the window and flooding the entire room.
Trouble comes his way for that, consequences and punishment. He can’t help it. His brain is always going. One moment when you are fielding he’s doing backflips between overs. The next, fielding in close at bat-pad, he’ll flick the ball back before anyone has had the chance to move and run the non-striker out. Keeping wicket he is an outrageous cheat, knocking the bails off with his gloves when the ball passes close and yelling, ‘He’s out!’ at the half-asleep umpire.
As a cricketer he is a joy to open with, an education as well as an entertainment. Normally as a batter when you tuck the ball to fine leg and set off at a stroll for a single, the fielder will see what you are doing and just jog around to lob the ball in. So we come up with a plan that if they shape up to lob the ball in, we’re going to sprint another run. Always we’re on the alert and the awareness of how to score runs.
If you’re standing at the non-striker’s end, he will tell you, ‘Chris man, just go a bit wider from the stump.’
‘Why? Why go wider?’
‘Okay, when yuh go wider, ’oos fielding at mid-on? Dem will have fi go wide because yuh blockin’ dem. Yuh create a gap fi me to straighter!’
A lot of people think he’s weird. And he’s done a lot of crazy stuff, and he talks a lot of crazy things. He will bat, for example, in two different sorts of shoes. He’s a right-hander, and on the left foot he’ll wear a rubber-soled trainer; on the right, a standard cricket spike. He says the back foot is his anchor, and the front foot is to slide out and play his cover drives. He jus do tings an’ we talk tings an’ just crazy.
He’s annoying at times. Always in the ears, ninga-ninga-ninga. Always talking crazy stuff, stupid stuff. When you’re batting with him, he’ll count the balls left in the over and steal the strike. Every fifth ball he’s off to want a single. T’ief di strike. But he makes you laugh, running down the pitch for those stolen singles, making you watch those movies with him, playing the gyalis with the girls, and he’s a super talent, one of the best batsmen you’ll see, talent in everything he does.
And then one day we do something special that marks it all, that Jamaica cricket will never forget, that West Indies cricket has never seen before.
It’s the Busta Cup, that season’s name for our first-class competition. Leon Garrick and me opening for Jamaica against a West Indies B team skippered by Richie Richardson, up at Jarrett Park on Montego Bay. Rain clouds have come in off the sea and it’s damp, the wicket a sticky dog. We lose the toss and get inserted, we get skittled for 129. The pitch starts to dry out, they reply with 184.
And then it happens. Leon and I start to bat again, and we bat, and we bat. The pitch is drying, the demons are leaving and the two good friends are making hay. We close the second day on 87 and 82 not out, come back on the Sunday and just bat, and bat, and bat, and they just toil, toil, toil.
I get to my hundred first, despite his strike-thieving. He follows fast, overtakes me, gets overtaken back, and then we start to race. Fours, sixes, laughing, driving, cutting, laughing, batting.
I have never batted for so long. Neither has Leon. But I have Lucas in my blood – all those long knocks on the concrete, all those day-long sessions, all the surviving and prospering against the big boys. The double hundred comes up for me, the double comes up for him.
At 425-0 we declare. 208 not out for me, 200 for him. Twenty years old, the first quadruple-century opening partnership in West Indian first-class history, and we have no idea. We were just batting, having fun. Just playing, just playing, just playing.
We bowl them out for 204. We both get man of the match.
The party back to Kingston is a proper one, through to 6 a.m. We’re so young and fresh and green. We feel like rockets. Nothing can slow us down.
The world I’m in now has changed. Those sorts of things don’t happen so much any more. Now the parties are finishing at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. And that’s way too early.
These days my reputation is known. I can’t be the carefree kid of old. Some of the best nights of my life came in India when I was just starting out, some of the best moments of my partying career. Going to the fashion shows, models everywhere, having a ball. Now, in the IPL, it’s more cut-throat. Women trying to make money out of you, women making up stories. Cheerleaders banned from talking to players because some were selling stuff to the newspapers.
My reputation is known, and people make assumptions. They’re wrong. Tink yuh know me? Yuh don’t know me.
The T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka, 2012. Three of us in the West Indies squad go out one night, and three of us come back, with three English girls coming with us. The clubs are closing, so we head to the hotel bar, and then that shuts too. Shall we go upstairs? Now security is tight. Any guests coming in have to sign in on the floor they’re going to, but when we got to my floor the security just waves us through. I don’t know if that’s because it’s me, but there’s no need to sign in, on you go, big grins. All of us into one room, a few drinks, some nice conversation.
All of a sudden I hear a knocking on the door. I open it to see Dwayne Bravo on the lookout, looking seriously worried.
I pop my head further out. Cops all over the floor! What’s happening here?
‘We’ve heard you have some girls here. Some prostitutes.’
Now these girls are certainly not prostitutes. They’ve just come to Sri Lanka to watch the World Cup.
More cops arrive. ‘We’re going to lock these girls up!’
Now the girls are crying. ‘Nah man, dem not gonna lock you up, just show a dem passport. Who you are an’ who is it, you know what I mean?’
We’re sitting among ourselves. ‘This is going to hit the media now. Ahh fock!’
So I think, I’d better phone my girlfriend. ‘Lissen me. Someting happen.’
I break it down to her and tell her. ‘I was in the room with the guys, we talking, no dramas, this and that.’
‘Okay, no problem.’
But when the thing actually hits the news, and hits the Caribbean, the story has changed. Only my name is now mentioned. Now there are five girls. In some reports there are seven. No reference to the other players, or the fact that these were nice girls, or that we were just enjoying a drink and some conversation. I’m the scapegoat. I’m the only goat. I’m in big trouble at home. ‘Ah look at dat Chris Gayle. Wit’ tree girls an’ more!’
The morning after the overblown night before, a big team meeting is called. The manager speaks about not being distracted. And we go on to win the tournament. Perhaps we should have done it more often.
So the girl adventures are different to how they used to be, and the girl adventures don’t feature Leon in these days. He lives in the US now, seeking work like so many Jamaicans, his cricket career long since gone. He did get a chance for the West Indies in the end, playing a practice match against South Africa at the same Montego Bay ground where we had filled our boots, and he filled his again, scoring so many so well that he was called up for the next Test against South Africa at Sabina Park. All seems set: Jamaican cricket’s spiritual home, him and I opening again together, Leon in some tremendous form, his talent ready to flower and progress. Both of us serious excited.
When we open together for Jamaica, he’ll take the first ball. But I’ve been playing Test cricket for a while, so I say to him, ‘You wan’ me tek first ball?’
‘No no no no. Same ting we do fi Jamaica. I’ll tek di first one.’
‘Oh-kay . . .’
So we walk out, home crowd loving it. He takes his guard, mark it again, ready now. Allan Donald in for his first ball, short and loose outside off stump, and Leon Garrick cuts – straight into Shaun Pollock’s hands at gully.
First ever Test match, first ever ball, a golden duck. The place, so noisy and expectant, now silent. And he just stand at the crease and mark his guard again like he’s still going to bat again. He can’t process it. He can’t believe it. All he wants is the earth to open and just take him in. ‘Oh, I’m so ashamed!’
He never played another Test. He got picked for a couple of ODIs, but even that went wrong. In one of them we batted together at the Recreation Ground in Antigua. I played a ball away and straight away he’s running, always looking for those cheeky singles.
‘Run one!’
‘No!’
‘Yes one!’
And he got run out, run out through his obsession with stealing runs. Just seven to his name, and anger mixed in with the dismay this time.
‘Okay, you run me out, dat will never happen again! Yuh should run! Dat an easy single!’
And on an’ on. I was never a relationship guy when I was young. The only one I’ve ever had is with my girl now.
I always said to myself, Christopher Henry Gayle, if you find a nice girl, settle down with her. And that’s what I’ve done.
We met on an inter-island ferry as she went home to St Kitts. She then sent a letter via her brother, with a photo inside and her phone number, telling me to call. So I did, and we would talk, talk, talk. Nothing more. She had never dated a guy, so it was all new and different. She’d come to watch the cricket in Jamaica sometimes, but at the same time I wasn’t really studying her. I was still doing my own thing and this and that. That’s how it started, nine years ago.
Because it’s my first proper relationship, it’s pretty challenging. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs, a lot of ins and outs. Sometimes we haven’t talked for an entire year. Because of me, making trouble, not listening, always tweeting shit, always talking stuff about a woman on Instagram, having some fun.
Have I been with other girls in the time I’ve been seeing her? In the break-up periods. You don’t speak for a year, I’m in Jamaica, she’s in St Kitts, tings will ’appen. But I have my favourite type of girl now. She got the booty, she got the looks, height, perfect. Natural. Kind, caring and sweet. That’s my baby.
In the wide world a man has to be careful. It’s not the fame; you travel the world and maybe they haven’t seen you in Jamaica, yet you’ll always have women out there who’ll want to touch you, want to throw themselves at you. That’s something you have to handle out there.
You get honey traps in cricket too. As part of the game’s regulations we have to attend anti-corruption lessons. They let us be aware that there are stings on the prettiest flowers. Not everyting good be great, okay?
They tend to hunt the bars for you. You can see. You can see from afar. The eyes. The look. They wear the sexiest thing, just for you to look at them. And you’re going to look; you’re human, so you’re going to look. You’ve got to be careful out there.
I’ve changed, but I haven’t changed completely. I mean, you look at a woman, and you’re going to lust over a woman for sure. You’re not going see a good-looking girl pass and no thought appear. And I’m sure women do the same as well. A woman look at guys, a woman think like guys. It’s just nature. It’s part of something we all have to understand.
It’s who’s gonna bite the bait, that’s the thing. Everybody look these days. Men look at women. Women look at men. You just have to live as works for you, and make sure you don’t bite. And if you’re going to bite, make sure you bite the right trap. Because the trap might be sprung, and you might get caught. Big time . . .