Sometime I look at my World Boss nickname, and I like it. Other time I look at it, and I look what I have achieved in the game, and I think, how about Universe Boss?
I’m the Six Machine, and my vision is Twenty20. More runs in the world’s biggest format than anyone else, one and a half thousand more and counting. The highest ever score. More centuries than any other player, by a multiple of three. The highest career average, the fastest hundred. Career sixes? Way out the back of 500, more than double anyone else.
That’s a long bill. And it’s not like I’m finished as well. I’m going to be building on those. I’m going to be constructing bigger milestones.
The Tsar of T20, the boss of the boundary boards. I’ve been called a pioneer, and I’ll take that word, even though I’d put it another way: I’m a legend. Most people wouldn’t call themselves that, but I think I am great. Put it more simply: I am great. The things I’ve done, trus’ mi. Serious things I’ve done.
You might think I’m being big-headed. But those people just don’t want to give you the full credit for what you deserve. I would ask them, what do I have to do to be great? I would wait for their answer. I just want their answer. Then I would say, is that it?
People think they understand T20. A little dash round the park. An easy hour or two for men too old or rich to care about the proper format. A slog and a bash and a mow that’s ugly and ill, a rude proposition rather than a long slow seduction.
Lissen mi. T20 is the most intense experience in cricket. T20 is a crash of hormone through the brain, a blast of electricity through the heart, an old calypso classic mashed up dancehall style.
As a batsman there is no rest, and there is no recovery. On red alert at all times, your mind always racing one step ahead of the bowlers. As a bowler it’s now or it’s never – locked on target from ball one, no time to reassess, only four overs to strike, only four overs to fox and fool. You’ve got to be quick. Yuh gotta be boom!
And you’ve got to be smart. Wild swinging won’t win you games. It’s not Test cricket, but it’s still ball onto sweet spot of bat, and that means having a look – at the pitch, at the bowler, at what the ball is doing.
Occasionally it can happen that I get a loose one first ball, and that can give you momentum as early as possible, and you can jump them. Sometime you can try to jump them in the first over anyway, but more so than often it doesn’t work for me. Play what you know will actually score runs. I tear attacks to pieces, but I stalk my prey first.
You have to calculate. You analyse the bowling attack. ‘Right, these two, they’ll bowl two overs. Occasionally this one, he’ll bowl three overs to try get me out.’ You work it out, do the maths. ‘You must com’ bowl. You must com’ bowl. I know I can take twelve off his over. Fifteen off his. Take him down for a big over.’
I analyse every bowler. I analyse the entire game. Who am I up against? How can they hurt me? How can I hurt them more?
You learn the game every time you go out there.
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You learn the game from way back.
People think T20 started in 2003. At Lucas we are playing it from knee-high, just as we are playing 15-over games and 10-over games. Not to do with marketing for us, or attracting new fans to cricket, for we are all disciples and preachers already, but for a more natural reason: night is falling, and we have to squeeze in a match.
Five overs a side. Cut it and chop it as you like, three players a side, eight or 15. We will play it fast and we will play it hard, proper shots and proper bowling, on the grass under the old scoreboard or under the tin roof of the pavilion veranda. It like we have dat vision, before it com’ to perfection.
You learn the game through youth. When we are at Excelsior, a nationwide competition called the Hotel League is established. Each of the big swish tourist hotels acts as a franchise, their team made up of seven employees, two big-name guest players and a couple of promising schoolboys. Thirty-five overs a side, four weeks of matches, and Popeye and I get the call-up from the Boscobel, an all-inclusive private resort on the north coast, a private resort with its own beach and championship golf course and waterpark and seven of its own restaurants.
The cricket is competitive and fast. The journey out there on Sunday nights after a match for Lucas is long and slow: jump in a taxi-bus from outside school out west to Spanish Town, change into another for the hour and a half drive north to Ocho Rios, change again to bounce along the coast east. Sometimes you can’t even feel your legs when you get out of the taxi. You can’t even walk. Yuh legs dead!
Oh, but when you get there . . . Popeye and me are sharing a room, but it’s a room that’s part of the resort. It’s a room that’s bigger than our house, that has a television the size of a window, and a window that looks out to the private beach. Where we can go and eat cheeseburgers for free, and then order some rum punches, and order another cheeseburger, and wash off the dust of the Rollington Town streets in the jacuzzi, and say hello to a few of the female guests who probably haven’t had the chance to mix with many authentic Jamaican boys yet.
An all-inclusive hotel, and they put two schoolers in it? Cyatch me if you can . . .
I don’t even sleep! Making sure I close the bar at night, making sure I eat enough to make up for the next five nights, feeling like a pro, feeling like any moment someone might pull the plug so let’s fill our boots.
And we are professionals. We are getting paid, an amazing £14 or so per match, and we are performing, getting the job done in the middle for the Boscobel boys. The two of us open, and Popeye is the ball-beater, crashing it all over, and me, still the shy boy until I get to the middle, I play it longer. Having a look, playing it through the ‘V’, keeping it technically pleasing.
We reach the semi-final, win that, and then the dream accelerates again: with a week to go until the final, we get to stay at the resort all week. No more sharing a bed or a concrete floor, no more Nutribun or stealing mangoes. They bring the mangoes to your table here, and they don’t slice them with ratchet knives. ‘Hey waiter! Bring me two cheeseburger. T’anks!’
Franchise life. And, fuelled on the good stuff and running on good vibes, we win the final for Boscobel too, and the long taxi back with Popeye is a journey of sighs and belches and ‘Dat really happen, yeah?’
So no one has ever been more ready for a so-call new format when it comes around these years later. Except the first time I play an official T20 match, it’s not just underwhelming but under water. Something called the International 20:20 Championship, but don’t be fooled; while there are teams from Pakistan and South Africa, there is no one from India or Australia or the West Indies or New Zealand, not least because there has yet to be a domestic T20 competition in those countries.
I’m playing for a Professional Cricketers Association select XI. Among my team-mates is a 39-year-old Phil DeFreitas, 10 years after he last played a Test match for England, and Robin Singh, the Indian all-rounder who had got me out in my very first appearance for the West Indies, but who is now 42 years old. It is mid-September, and we are in Leicester.
Because we are in Leicester and it is mid-September, it keeps raining. The tournament is only supposed to last three days, which is probably a good thing, otherwise we better start building boat.
The opposition is a club from Sri Lanka called Chilaw Marians. We start in the rain. I bowl one over, which includes two wides and goes for 16 runs. The rain forces us off, and carries on hard. After several hours of hiding in the pavilion looking for extra layers, the match is abandoned. I don’t get to put my pads on, let alone bat.
Later, in some puddles, there will be a bowl-off which we lose 6-2. I’m not involved. Neither am I involved for our second fixture, against a club from South Africa called Titans, because that one is abandoned without a ball being bowled.
All glamour, dis Twenty20 ting.
So it’s hardly a surprise that no one saw the revolution coming. Had you told me on that cold autumn day, in an empty Grace Road, surrounded by retired old pros and umpires in wellington boots, that this was the start of something that would not only transform my world but shake up cricket like nothing else in 140 years, that would trigger big money and huge crowds and crazy noise and posh hotels and me being called the Bradman of the times . . . I would have laughed in your face, and then asked you if there was a shop nearby that sold warm coats.
No one was taking it seriously. When they stage the first ever T20 international in February 2005, New Zealand and Australia walk out at Eden Park wearing retro kit and big 1970s moustaches. Glenn McGrath bowls a ball underarm in mock tribute to Trevor Chappell’s famous dodgy deed, and umpire Billy Bowden shows him a red card.
I watched, and I thought of the Lucas games, and I thought of the Leicester lazing about, and I thought, ‘Wooo, easy! Easy cricket!’
But then I played a game for real, and every ball I seemed to have to run between the wickets. Man, after two overs I was blowing. ‘Whoah, is this really easy cricket?’ I had thought, I don’t have to practise for this, I don’t have to train for this, I don’t have to run for this. After that game my eyes were opened, and I changed my style. ‘Oh-kay, dis see-rious. Short an’ spicy but serious. An’ very, very intense . . .’
I looked into it some more. ‘Okay, so we got to try and score off every single delivery.’ And have to run for everything, because every run counts. Going hard from ball one, swinging your arms, letting go your bat. We would just go out there and say, ‘Lissen mi, it’s runs for runs. Whoever score the most runs win.’ No tactical thoughts, just a slugfest. ‘Beat ball, beat ball.’
Then you start to learn the game. ‘Hold it, I can face a maiden over an’ still win di game. I can face two maiden overs an’ still score a hundred.’ Give yourself a little feel, give yourself a couple of balls.
You learn what you can do, and how much damage you can do when. So now we’re looking at the bigger picture. Twenty overs, 120 deliveries. How many runs you want to get off the first six? Then six to ten, 10 to 15. And you can just explode, when you want. That’s the realization that is the game-changer: you can just explode.
With each month the hits and giggles became more serious. The West Indies’ first T20 international, my bowling now a weapon with two wickets and just 22 runs off my four overs, but New Zealand hitting a six and four off Ian Bradshaw’s last over to take it to a tie, and then 20,000 boozy fans cheering Eden Park down as their boys win a bowl-off.
There was talk now among the players on the scene, but more about the pace of the game, about little ideas for tactics and tricks. The big money was still absent; you were still lucky to get US$1,000 per match. So no one was talking about new cars or new houses, or about Twitter feeds, or launching their own range of cologne, or signing up with a manufacturer of motorcycle oil so they could tap into the Indian market. We were just happy to play, to enjoy the fresh challenge and have fun. We had no idea what was in store of us.
The game matures. KP and his switch hit, M. S. Dhoni and his ‘helicopter’, Tillakaratne Dilshan and the ‘Dilscoop’. I was chill about it – the reverse scoop was nothing new to me; we’d played it as kids, and I’d used it in Test matches and one-dayers. But I didn’t need anything fancy. Occasionally I would throw something in to surprise the bowler, but I preferred to stick to my strengths. I knew my capabilities, and I knew my areas.
What blew the whole thing apart was first Allen Stanford, with his 20/20 tournament in the Caribbean, and then the first ever World T20 in 2007. More in a little while on Stanford, much more, but the main fun of that was still to come.
Down in South Africa, West Indies drawn to face the hosts in the opening game, I walk out at the Wanderers in Johannesburg to face the first ball. Worl’ Baass, facing the first ever ball in the first ever World T20? It’s a good storyline, but I’m an entertainer, so I understand this needs more.
South Africa aren’t that pleased to see me. I’ve scored a century against them on one leg, and I’ve put them around for a triple century when I’ve batted so long their non-bowling captain has had to send down 40-something overs and even their wicketkeeper has had to swap off his pads and gloves. I can read it on their faces as I take guard and look around the field: ‘Oh no, not Chris Gayle again . . .’
Some days you can just feel it. You can just feel phenomenal, hitting it from ball one. And this is one of those days and one of those nights.
Baaall one. Smash away for four. Hitting it right, just hitting it right.
It’s a good wicket to bat on, and I’m taking the attack to them. I’m in a grey sleeveless sweater to go with my maroon shirt, so let’s heat this up. Albie Morkel, tall and awkward, more awkward still when you lick him for 16 off his first over. His big brother Morné looking for revenge, following me with that steep bouncer of his, getting some Mama Lashie off the ones he pitches up.
I dig into Shaun Pollock. Shaun Pollock, him get some proper stick in dere. Hitting more down the ground, pulling and cutting square, everything coming out perfect, everything coming out perfectly smooth.
I feel unstoppable. Skipper Smith is so vexed he decides he has no option but to lean back on his spin again. Which we dig into as well, 16 off the only over he tries. We pretty much just go berserk.
You’d expect the crowd to be silenced and still. There’s fewer West Indian supporters in the stadium than there are players. But in the steep triple-tier stands and among the picnics and pints on the grassy banks it’s like everyone is touched by a live wire – everyone jumping and waving, the cheerleaders dancing, the fireworks fizzing and popping. The more berserk I go the more they respond. Beers guzzling, beers flying. They want to see their home team win, but being entertained like this is another story.
I should be thinking about the 100. I should be thinking about becoming the first batsman to ever hit a century in international T20 cricket – we get to 50 in 33 balls, I get to my own off 26 balls, with three fours overshadowed by four sixes. The total goes past 100 off 63 balls.
I don’ hunt dese records. My personality jus’ coming tru, coming tru naturally.
I don’t bother with the maths. I don’t bother with the what ifs. I just bother the bowlers. I’m in the magic zone and all I can see is the ball like it’s lit up and luminous and the ball disappearing deep into the crowd. Up on the wave, wind in my face, riding it riding it riding it.
You get close to that milestone and for the first time you realize it’s going to be possible. Now we find out what sort of man you are. Some might say, ‘I’m gonna take less risk, get a hundred.’ Others might shrug – ‘Lissen mi, I’m still gonna cyarry on.’
From a team point of view, it requires you to keep blazing. So don’t stop. Just get on with it, blazin’ it, blazin’ it.
There is one shot that makes me smile. Shaun Pollock is bowling most of his deliveries at my pads, trying to cramp me up. I’m batting with Shiv Chanderpaul, and he comes down between overs in his quiet crabby way and says, ‘Chris man, jus’ step away a bit.’ So I do step away to leg, and Pollock still tries to follow me, but my reaction is so quick and subconscious that I flick at it like it’s a fat lazy fly, and fly away it does, up and away, away out beyond the stand beyond deep midwicket.
Feel da Six Machine.
Shiv comes down for a brush of the glove. ‘You see? I told you, just do that.’ And the cookie is still crumbling, and a few balls later when Pollock goes full and I crash him down the ground, the history is made.
A hundred runs, off just 50 balls. Nine mighty sixes, five thrash-dash fours.
And because it is South Africa, I bust out my little Chaplin dance again. If they’re sick of me, they’re sick as street dogs about the moves that come with it.
I still keep that innings in my top drawer. 117 before I sky it and out, a shift in the paradigm, a number that makes no sense. In the end Smith and his men had their revenge, the night-time dew costing us catches and 23 wides and Herschelle Gibbs catching us cold, but the tournament was alight, and our worlds would never be the same again.
Yuvraj Singh would smash six sixes off one Stuart Broad over. India, powered on Dhoni and Virender Sehwag, would beat Pakistan in the final’s final over.
India had fallen in love with limited-overs cricket in 1983, when they shocked our legend West Indies side of King Viv and Clive Lloyd, Malcolm Marshall and Mikey Holding, in the World Cup final at Lord’s. And India fell in love with the shorter form of the shortened game when they won that first World T20, and the IPL and all its adventures and riches would soon be swallowing us all up. So maybe I need to thank my forebears in the West Indies side too.
The world change, and players change.
‘Lissen, we don’t know what we have here.’
‘Lissen, let’s work this out.’
No longer is this all about the powerhouses and the big engines. A new phrase on our ears: 360-degree cricket. Big hitting is one thing, but clipping and flicking through the unguarded gaps brings boundaries just the same. Still, normal batting can give you a strike rate of 100, a run a ball, so add in some new angles and smart calculations and you’re up and away with the mighty biceps and long levers. And those shots and approaches will bleed into one-day and Test cricket, so an old slow goat is now dashing along like the flamboyant stars of old, and the older game starts looking less like the older game with every passing year.
Bowlers look at the challenge and think twice and then again. If pace just gets angled away, cut it right back. The spinners are no longer cannon fodder but the secret services, all cunning tricks and sleight of hand. Variety becomes the spice of life. An over of military medium becomes a crazy mixed bag of who can guess what – slow bouncers, spearing yorkers, fingers run over the ball to dig it that way, seams scrambled to send it this.
And I grow into it like an emperor exploring his latest conquests. If other batsmen are studying it, I’m the Nobel professor. If other batsmen are working it out, I’m coming up with the equations.
The next World T20, and hard yards for the West Indies team. May is a month of cold winds and minimal wins. We lose the two Tests against England by 10 wickets and an innings and 83 runs. Of the two one-dayers that beat the weather we get thumped in both.
June brings warmth and life back to chilled Caribbean bodies. In our opening group match, against those chirping boys from Australia, we keep them down to 169. And then the Six Machine really gets to work.
Brett Lee is an authentic rapid bowler. 310 wickets in Tests, 380 in one-dayers. He is a gladiator too, so he is the one who must feel the sword. Easy on his first ball, timing it away through mid-off for four. Punchier on his third, slashing it over point for four more.
Two more fours off his next over, and then the violence. First ball, front leg out of the way, lick him into Archbishop Tenison’s school, across Harleyford Road from the back row of the stands. Second ball, good yorker, bowling ‘Bing’. Third ball, Bing get pinged, way over long-on and onto the roof of the Bedser Stand. Ian Chappell will later stake it as the biggest six ever hit at the Oval, I’m not arguing. Fourth ball, good yorker, good riposte. Fifth ball, no-ball, mash through cover. Free hit, back where it came so fast and nasty it nearly kills my opening partner, Andre Fletcher. Sixth ball, come on now Brett, don’t drop it short, those poor people in the stand are in serious danger . . .
Three sixes, two fours. 27 off the over.
Lee’s a good man. Figures of 1-56 off four overs don’t look good on anyone, not even a pretty boy like Brett, although at least that one is my wicket. Sadly for him and his fellow golden boys, it doesn’t come until I’ve laid down 88 off 50 balls, my side only 13 runs from the line, but at least he laughs and shakes my hand.
He won’t be the last. This is a club with plenty of room to grow.
Even as the light shines and the entertainment flows there are those who look to live in the darkness. T20 is growing so fast it must be blocking the light elsewhere. The man who is doing what no one has ever done before must be to blame for why people don’t want the same old same old any more.
A few weeks before that second World T20, I’m quoted as saying that I ‘wouldn’t be so sad’ if Test cricket died out. Quickly it becomes a bigger thing than the original question: Chris Gayle hates Test cricket, Chris Gayle doesn’t care, Chris Gayle is a disgrace to the maroon cap and the West Indies’ captaincy.
I was saying none of those things. I wasn’t bashing Test cricket; I was still playing it. To score runs in Test cricket is something beautiful. Even after the periods when injury or dispute has kept me out, I’ve kept coming back. I hope to come back once again. Do you play 103 Tests if you don’t care about it, or make two Test triple centuries if the style and pace bore you?
Only seven men have more West Indies Test caps than me. I’ve played more than Sobers, more than Marshall and Holding, more than Richie Richardson or Curtly Ambrose.
I am not to blame for the way the world spins.
Cricket is a business, and businesses respond to what consumers and employees want. Players understand the toll on their body of endless long days, understand the pain of being away from home and their families on long overseas tours. If you can travel less, if you can hurt less, and still play the game you love, why wouldn’t you?
Listening to dancehall doesn’t mean you hate reggae. It doesn’t mean you don’t understand that without Bob Marley there would be no Beenie Man. And people still love reggae, but they’re buying dancehall. They’re filling dancehall venues and gigs and buying dancehall records, even as they’re not throwing away their old dub cuts or reggae vinyl.
Test grounds used to be full. First day, second day, third day, a sold-out crowd. And yet outside of the Ashes you don’t see those things any more.
Really and truly, it is only the two big teams who attention gravitates towards. Australia and England. The Ashes will always have its buzz because of its history.
But the only thing now carrying Test cricket is the Ashes. Us lower-ranked teams, we’re always going to find it a struggle. We only get two or three Test series here and there. The game is not set up to develop our talents or to nurture them when they come through.
You need the names, you need the stars. England and Australia have that, and so the supporters watch it. In the other nations they are choosing to look elsewhere.
I was born into Test cricket and I have lived through Test cricket. I can bat like a true Test batsman. People in the West Indies still love cricket. They’re still passionate about it. But times get a bit harder now. Everybody has to work. There are families to support, mouths to feed; to miss work for cricket is going to be a struggle.
The love lives on. It’s just shown in a different way.
The World T20 in Sri Lanka, 2012. We go into it in form, we go into it with the islands unified behind us.
And we believe. Our match against New Zealand, a tie, goes to a one-over eliminator – so much better than a bowl-off, not least because I can stride out to face Tim Southee after Ross Taylor has given us a target of 17, and crash his first ball away for six, and another for three, and then Gangnam dance with Marlon Samuels when he completes the job.
Confidence enable you to flourish.
Into the semis against Australia, me and Johnson Charles opening the batting. After what happened to Brett Lee they have a plan this time: they can’t stop me when I’m on strike, so instead try to stop me getting on strike. I’m still there after 10 overs, but I’ve faced only 18 balls, and because it’s Colombo the humidity is up and I’m cramping through my core.
I’ve been through tougher. A scamper and a sprint when I have to, a lash and a lick when I do. David Hussey goes into the second tier of the stand. Shane Watson takes some further clatter. Xavier Doherty does get me caught, but only by a policeman standing by his motorbike, 20 metres beyond the boundary.
I can always find an extra spark against Australia. So what if they keep me down to 41 balls? When five of them go for four and six for six, the sums still stack up sweet. When Kieron Pollard adds some mighty muscle of his own, you can look in the eyes of the bowlers and fielders spread far and wide and know that their spirits are broken. Five wickets down after only six overs, they are gone long before the end, and Gangnam comes out to play once again. World T20, Universe Boss.
The final: Sri Lanka, home soil, immense home support.
We believe, and we are together. We have rallied around our captain, Darren Sammy, senior players giving him thoughts and tactics, young ones the energy and dash. There is hunger for this game and for each other, there is passion for what we have done and what we hope to do. Having come this far we’re not going to turn back.
It’s a hard start. The bowling is tight and the wicket deteriorating. It takes 17 deliveries before we score a run off the bat, and I can manage only three before Ajantha Mendis pins me lbw. After 10 overs we are a mere 32-2.
Marlon Samuels gives us life. Sammy drags us further. Mendis ends with four wickets for 12 runs off his four overs, but we do not allow defeat to enter our minds.
Confidence come from dedication.
First over, Ravi Rampaul blows Dilshan’s off stump away. Now for the squeeze – for running down every push and tuck, for bowling so tight that a batsman can’t breathe, for making every sliding save and skimming the bails with each flat hard return.
Eight overs gone, only 39 on the board, 99 more needed. Now to attack with your opponent’s own weapon – spin.
Samuel Badree gets Sangakkara with his leg breaks. Sunil Narine gets Jayawardene with his snarling offies. Sammy strangles Angelo Mathews with three dot balls and cleans out his middle peg with the fourth.
It’s not even close. With every wicket we dance and jump a little higher; when the final one goes, 37 still needed, we Gangnam on the outfield with joy fizzing through our veins, a long line of us, bouncing and skipping and spraying drinks.
We party at the hotel, we party past midnight. Two o’clock, party. Four o’clock, party. Dawn come, we’re still drinking, enjoying the moment, maximizing the fun.
The West Indies’ first ICC trophy since the 1979 World Cup. A proper team, all playing for each other, all in it together, getting the best out of ourselves. Back home, the Caribbean alight.
So don’t tell me that T20 doesn’t matter. And don’t tell me we don’t care.