I never liked maths at school. It wasn’t the subject for me. The only bit I loved was the six times table.
One six is six. One six is not enough. Two sixes are 12. Three sixes is more like it. Four sixes are 24. Five sixes is proper hitting. Six sixes is World Boss.
Most times tables end at 12. That’s the boundary. Not mine. I have no problem with boundaries. I actually quite like them, particularly when they’re underneath my sixes.
Don’t think every sporting challenge we attempted in Rollington Town was pulled off in fancy style. Popeye was once subbed off by Mr Mac in a football match after just 15 minutes. He hadn’t just been playing badly, he had failed to touch the ball at all. Kevin Murray was once selected to run in the 800 metres at Champs, the annual island-wide schools athletics competition that obsesses the nation. 800 metres is never a popular distance in Jamaica; it’s at least eight times further than most of us want to run. You couldn’t fault Kevin’s effort – he gave it everything on the second lap, and finished with a spectacular dive across the line. Sadly the rest of the field had run across it long before, but still.
The six was always different. Not always did you want to hit sixes, for we were raised as purists. Not always could you hit them, for arms were skinny and bats made of bamboo. But when biceps grew and ambitions followed, the pleasure in sending the ball way way away became an obsession.
As a Six Machine you find fascination in your chosen field, even if the field you have chosen is across the road from the one you’re playing in. Not all sixes are the same. Not all boundaries feel the same to clear.
Two grounds are sweeter for sixes than any other. When you’re playing well at Sabina Park, hitting sixes and entertaining people, your own people, it’s a joy and a privilege to see the jumping around and waving the flag. An’ you can hear all di horns, an’ it give you goose-bump . . .
You know you’re in control. You know from the crowd reaction how you’re performing and how you’re hitting sixes, and you know like a conductor how to raise and sway the noise.
‘Lick him again! Lick him again!’
You can actually hear it out there from the middle. ‘Give him another one! Give him another one!’
In Jamaica we love excitement, and if you can create excitement at Sabina Park, the cradle of our cricket, you feel the love and you bounce it back.
The Chinnaswamy, Bangalore. A long way from home, but the love has come with you. A good wicket to bat on, not a big ground and with a fast outfield as well, the bounce true and even and not too much for spin so you can play through the line. But it’s what comes down from the stands that makes it, and what you send back that drives it on even more.
In Bangalore the chants reach you even when you are locked on the bowler. ‘Six! Six! Six!’ So you say, ‘Okay, let’s go fit it in with them . . .’ and you just hit a six, and then all the red flags around us waving and ‘Gayle Storm!’ banners and chanting and chanting and everything just going off the roof.
That feeling you get, you want to grab it. You want to play cricket, you want to entertain, you want to hit sixes. And it’s all because of the spectators and the fans, the joy you see operating on them when you’re hitting those sixes. Any day of my life I would be happy being in Kingston or Bangalore, hitting sixes, watching the ball fly. Just beautiful.
Not all sixes to all parts are equal. You have your favourite targets – the North Stand at Sabina Park, where the dressing-room is, where the liveliest crowd is. Your six flies in there, everybody will be jumping around, jumping to catch it. Bangalore? Not towards the dressing-room, because that’s more like a VIP area, team owners, family members, and so less jumping around. Anywhere else you’re going to have a lot of hands going up, a lot of hands reaching into the skies.
You bring joy but you also bring danger. A hard core of compressed cork, covered in polished leather, slammed into a bank of unprotected people. In Bangalore a six of mine flew over the waves of reaching hands, ricocheted off the back wall of the stand and hit a young girl in the face. Only afterwards did I find out, an 11-year-old taken to hospital with a broken nose.
When they told me what had happened I didn’t even go back to the hotel. I went straight to see her, feeling sad and intimidated in a way, to know that my shot had broken her nose. And I went in there, and saw the blood on her shirt. Tears in my eyes.
‘Tia girl, I’m so sorry about this.’
She looked at me back, big smile on her face. ‘Chill!’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Don’t be sorry! Don’t be sad. Why you sad? Just keep hitting sixes!’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Keep hitting sixes!’
No tears. Nothing at all. I gave her a hug, I gave her a signed shirt. And the next home game I brought her into the stadium, and she watched this time from the posh seats.
I walked out to bat. I looked up at the stands. Cardboard signs, everywhere – ‘Please hit me, Chris!’ Holes cut in the cardboard for their noses to poke through. ‘Please break my nose!’ ‘Please hit my nose so you can visit me in hospital!’ All the way around the stands.
Some like to see their sixes bounce off a roof; I like to see them buried in the crowd, totally disappear.
It’s like watching wind go through a field of corn. Everyone swaying and ducking and a magic path opening up. You’ll see 20 pairs of hands all coming together, and then the ball just goes until it pops out again, thrown back, fingerprints and sweat and love all over it. Sometimes you hit a flat one, a skimmer, and they’re the dangerous ones. That ball is travelling. If you see it coming it’s on you quicker than your eyes tell you. If you don’t see it coming you don’t see it at all. Incoming missile. Run for cover!
I’ve hit a lot of cricket balls. As a batter you know as soon as you’ve hit a ball. Big hit. This will be close. Ball-boy, please duck. Lady on the top tier, please look up. And the ball goes like a rocket, and you hope that this isn’t the day it happens.
Not often is the catch taken. They’re not moving their feet. They can’t. There’s a reason why the fielder at long-on doesn’t stand with his legs between the back of one plastic seat and the front of another. Neither is he trying to make a catch while being shoved or holding a beer in the other hand. People in front jumping up. People to the side jumping across. Arms coming across you. It’s not a surprise so few crowd catches are taken, it’s a miracle any are.
When you clear those fans, when you clear the stands they’re sitting in, it can be a different kind of fun. Somerset against Kent, summer 2015, Taunton. I’ve hit 14 sixes, and there’s another one in the barrel. Mighty six, out of the ground, into the River Tone. That’s the ball gone. Bobbing around in the middle of the river.
Except this particular fan wants to lay his hands on it. Off come his shoes, off come his jeans, off comes his top. Down to the pants and in he goes, some hard-working front crawl out through the murky water, grabbing the ball, tying up on the way back to the banks but just about making it, fished out by his mates while the crowd watching cheer him on or shout, ‘Shark!’
I don’t know all this. I’m just signing autographs afterwards, when a man with wet hair and cold hands holds up a damp white ball.
‘I jumped in the river for this.’
‘No way. You’re kidding me . . .’
People all around me: ‘Yup, it’s true.’
I sign the ball for him, thinking yeah right, and then I’m on social media later and I see all the clips of his expedition. ‘Whoah, so it was true!’ So I follow him on Twitter. He’s enjoying that, and then comes the tweet. ‘Lissen man, I’ll buy you some rum. And we’ll meet at a club.’
And we did. Down the club, having a rum together. You need a rum when you’ve been in water that’s as cold as an English river. And when you’ve not been ploughing through it, but doggy-paddling like a hound after a stick. Good souvenir though, hey?
The adrenaline kick of a six comes from the pull shot. A bread-and-butter shot, maybe, but a rich bread and butter with fat juicy raisins and spoonfuls of rum when it goes away way way. It’s a great, great scene, oh, so nice to see! Good long airtime if you get it high, low and nasty if you roll the wrists a little. A quick reaction, a harder six to send away because it can get you in trouble. Play with a cross-bat and you’re playing with fire.
You can take a spinner for six when you want. Whatever. I destroy left-arm spinners. Destroy them. Coming in to you, into your groove, right where you like to hit.
It’s more satisfying to hit a fast bowler for six. Hitting the new ball off a fast bowler for six – that’s better still. Hitting a century is usually considered the best feeling in cricket. I can tell you that going to your century by hitting a six is the finest feeling of all.
The straight six is the most beautiful to watch, but the hook shot off the fast bowler is the most thrilling. When you pull it off your nose, the ball coming in to damage your head, you have won that battle, and you have conquered fear.
I’d like to say that it’s more satisfying hitting some bowlers than others, but I’ve hit all of them. You name them, they’ve felt my hands. Everyone. I mean they get me out too, but I’ve had a taste of everyone. I’ve had a piece of them all. I make sure I’ve stamped my authority on the big names.
The mis-hit six? Cheap but lovely. Off the top edge, your guns and your weapon sending it sailing into the crowd all the same. Play a cross-batted shot, try a sweep, and away it can go.
The bat I use these days has got some thick edges. It’s a big piece of wood. You travel back in time and give my Spartan CG Boss Force or Spartan CG Boss Thunder to an old-timer opener and he’d be dragging it out to the middle and asking for help from short leg and first slip to lift it when he gets there. You’re also paying a lot of excess baggage. That’s how big it is. Powerful. And it does help me a little with those top edges by getting me a bit of mileage over the boundary. Once you know you have a good willow, you’re willing to take chances, because you back your weapon to fire.
You want to make sure you get good meat when you’re hitting the ball. Proper meat. When you can’t, you lean back on proper timing. When you can’t have proper timing either, that’s the time to bring out the Six Machine power. You trust your bat. Make good contact and that ball is gone. You know you want to push it sometimes – time it and it gone for six.
Try to muscle it and you will lose your shape. When you’re going for maximum power your head is all over the place. Your eyes totally gone off the ball. You’ll top-edge it, mis-hit it or miss it, because there’s no actual balance.
It’s the sound that tells you. The sound tells you it’s gone.
The Chinnaswamy, May 2011. Kochi have made 125 in 20 overs, and Dilshan and I walk to the middle with the chants already in our ears. ‘Six! Six! Six!’
Always have a look. Only one scoring shot off the first five balls of R. P. Singh’s over, and then to the last, pop him away into the second tier beyond long-on.
The giant screens flash. ‘INTER-GAYLECTIC!’ It’s what comes down from the stands that makes it. ‘Six! Six! Six!’
Dilshan on the charge in the second, 4, 4, 2, 0, 4, 6. Okay. We’re smoking, and we can finish this quickly. The bowlers are under the pump, and the crowd are ready to explode.
Prasanth Parameswaran isn’t a bad bowler. He bowls pretty decent left-arm pace. But when a new bowler comes on, you’re going to put him under pressure immediately, and when you’re chasing a low total and the magic is with you, it cuts the risk and builds the stage.
The first one I run down the wicket, give myself a bit of room and wallop it over long-on. The second one the keeper comes up to the stumps to stop me running down the wicket, so I make them do the running in the stands beyond the point boundary instead. It’s a no-ball, so I send my free hit away for four through midwicket, and then, just to show it’s classical timing that drives this destruction, place the next past extra cover for four more.
Still only three balls gone, and 21 runs taken. Our total has already passed 50.
Fourth ball, mashed over cover for six more. Fifth, the keeper goes back because what’s the point, so I charge that one too and watch it disappear over the sight-screen. Final ball, cheeky inside edge down fine for four more.
One over, 37 runs.
As a kid you grow up with certain solid facts in the brain. Six is the maximum you can hit off a ball. 36 is the maximum you can hit off an over.
37? That’s cricket Zlatan-style. That’s cricket Usain-style – new numbers, impossible numbers.
Dilshan comes down with a smile on his face and knocks gloves. I keep my gladiator’s mask on. Heart can be pounding but you won’t see any of it.
Nothing is said to the bowler.
I didn’t destroy Parameswaran’s career. Maybe I actually helped it, because I gave him such good publicity. The following year he came and joined us at RCB. We didn’t discuss it much. He had a bowl to me in the nets, and he didn’t start shaking.
When you get that ping off the bat, when it comes off the sweet spot – ooof! It never loses its magic. And when it comes off sweet, when you see it fly and you know it’s a big one, that’s a double buzz, because I know the fans are going to be happy.
Not all sixes are equal.
There’s one that was hit by Albert Trott at Lord’s in 1899 that cleared the new pavilion. No one has ever done that since, and when you think that the bat he was swinging could fit three times into the ones we use now, that deserves respect sent down the centuries.
Not all sixes are measured. But my favourite came in Napier on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island, penultimate day of the second Test in December 2008, with Jeetan Patel bowling to me. I hit him out of the ground. Not just over the ropes, but over the stands. And those are big boundaries. Right out of McLean Park. Anything that fly that far should come with its own drinks trolley.
I’ve hit a lot of sixes. A lot of balls out of a lot of parks. But if you could have seen that one go . . .
I’ve hit balls into stands. I’ve hit balls out of stands. I’ve hit balls that have broken bits off stands, and I’ve hit balls into construction sites where stands used to be. I’ve knocked over drinks, I’ve broken windows.
I would like to formally apologize to the owners of the cars I have dented. If it was your windscreen that I shattered, I’m sorry, but please remember to park further away next time Six Machine come to town. It’s worth the walk.
I’ve never killed anything, except maybe a bowler’s heart. It does happen – there’s a stuffed sparrow in the MCC museum at Lord’s that took a cricket ball in the beak in the 1930s, and South Africa’s Jacques Rudoph killed a pigeon at Headingley a few years ago – but when I’m batting most birds take to the skies for a better view. They’re not stupid. They don’t mess around once I’m batting. Clear the decks. When Chris Gayle is out, they’ll come back to the pitch and pick up the crumbs. To be honest, I could probably polish off something bigger than a sparrow anyway. An albatross. A hippo. Trus’ mi.
Balls go everywhere. Rivers. Back gardens. Picnics. People will come up to you as you leave the dressing-room and accuse you of making a mess of their bonnet. Lissen mi. You knew I was in town. And you still brought your car, your pride and joy. That’s not playing the odds.
I’ve never been handed a bill. One day it’ll happen. For now I should maybe be careful what I autograph when it’s offered to me, make sure I unfold the piece of paper so I can be certain it doesn’t open out into an invoice.
‘Lick him again! Lick him again!’
Still I’m pushing the six times table further and further. More than 600 times six now in T20, although now you’re reading this I’ll have made dust of those numbers too.
I’m alone in my world. KP can’t hit sixes like me. He can’t hit them as often and he can’t hit them as far. He knows that already. I could even switch hands and bat right-handed and beat KP in hitting sixes. Lots of sixes, but only one Six Machine.
IPL 2012, I hit 59 sixes. KP did well. He was second. And he was still 20 sixes behind me. In IPL 2013, 51 sixes, 22 more than Kieron Pollard in number two. IPL 2015, 38 sixes, 10 more than Pollard. And that was with an injured back.
I played only three matches for Somerset in the 2015 NatWest Blast. In that time I hit 29 sixes. Luke Wright matched that total, but he batted 14 times. Ross Whiteley hit 29 sixes too, in his case in 13 innings. He ended with an average of 39. Mine was 328.
The nature of a West Indian cricketer is to play your shots, to play with aggression, to play with flair. To be the showman. Add in a gym in your own house and you build the machine even bigger.
You want to build six-hitting muscles, you do the hard work. On the pulley machine, attach a bar to the loop when it’s at the bottom. Start with a light weight and work on the hand speed. Move the pulley to the top, and use the bar to play a pull shot or down the ground. Light weights, quick hands. Break out the resistance bands. Tie one end around a tree or table leg, hold the other in two hands and play natural. Tune the strokes, build the engine.
Still some critics claim hitting a six is a risky shot, as if putting the ball where no fielder can touch it is somehow dangerous. I’m not playing it as a risky shot. I’ve worked out the odds of the ball being in the right place and of me doing what I want with it. Don’t get me wrong – if there are two guys on the boundary I’m looking to take them on for sure, because you’re backing your ability. And sometimes you will get caught out there, and you’ll look ridiculous. But before you fall you will have laid many low with mighty blows, and you will have entertained.
Hitting a six is a risky shot, is it? Maybe that’s why, in 2,056 Tests, no one had ever hit the first ball of a Test match for six. The first ball of a Test match you look to defend. You want to survive. You never attack the first ball.
I don’t hunt these records, but your personality comes through in what you do.
Dhaka, Bangladesh, towards the end of 2012. I didn’t think of it the night before, or as a long-term aim. When I was walking out, the mindset was that I would be facing a fast bowler. But when I saw debutant off-spinner Sohag Gazi marking his run-up, I thought, are you kidding me? Are you taking the piss? I’m going to put them on the back foot from the first ball.
And then in it came, floated up, and I go for it. An instinct shot, because I had set the mind for an attacking shot. I set the mind before a ball had already been bowled. It was already in the making, so I just went straight through. Watch me fly.
No one was down at long-on. So in some ways it was a risk-free shot. But even if there had been a man – two men, three men, men on ladders – I would still have done it, because he was a debutant. A fresh wicket, and giving a spinner the ball?
Most of the times when I get out fast, I know I won’t last long. I’m too attacking. If I stay there some time and then think about it, I’ll last longer. Sometime I remind myself, lissen Chris, if you keep this going you know what will happen, so I try to curb it a little, and then start back again. But in that particular moment I had to keep it going.
Four next ball to leg, then another six down the ground. To 24 before anyone had woken up, two men back on the straight boundary now, and you keep going and going and going, and then one false shot . . .
Bangladesh will have felt they won the battle, because they set the trap and I sprung it. But at the same time, within myself, I knew that was the plan, and I wasn’t bothered by it. I still did my thing. I could have curbed my game and this and that, but I carried on.
I had no idea that I was the first. As a kid I couldn’t have imagined it. As an adult I couldn’t believe that someone hadn’t done it. But then you think about it. Most opening batsmen would never even have dreamed of trying it. Most of that small percentage who did imagine it would quickly have run a mile from the idea. Which leaves you even fewer who would have considered it, and even fewer who would have had the opportunity – the right bowler, on the right day, on the right pitch, putting the ball in the right spot.
If someone matches me now, it’ll have to be pre-planned. And it will have to be someone big to take the chance.
When the time comes to say goodbye, that one will give me a little smile. A little, whoah! In the moment I never looked at it like that. It was still a Test match we had to win. My opening partner, Kieran Powell, hit 117. Shiv Chanderpaul made a double ton. Denesh Ramdin made another century, and Tino Best then took five wickets in the final innings to bowl us to victory.
Those were the important numbers. But don’t ever sing to me that three is the magic number. We all know what the true magic number is.