My early days in India, and I’m lost.
You be in the field and you’re just lost. Lost completely in the middle. Sachin and Yuvraj smashing it all round, and the noise and the heat and the humidity . . .
‘Chris man, what I got myself into?’
And every day is ram-jam-pack, from the streets to the stadium, from early until past late. The ground full and noise, and every boundary they put away bringing a rolling wall of roars and whistles and drums down upon you. We can’t focus, we can’t hold catches. We can’t work out the low turning wickets, and we can’t work out the heat. Scores here and there, but every day a broken heart, out in the deep chasing and then again at the crease.
You try to ride it out, but it takes its toll. Mentally the constant stimulation drains you. Physically your immune system cannot handle it. You’re going to get ill. You will get diarrhoea, you will get sick, and out here that’s not a pretty feeling. You lose a lot of weight in India. You get slim. Bad slim.
Back then. Back before the Indian Premier League.
It was the moment cricket changed for ever, when the lifestyle of everyone who took part changed for ever. Doors opened up. Rewards came, at last, for many. What you make for playing seven hours of Test cricket compared to what you earn for playing seven hours of football? Cricketers were underpaid, and then suddenly some were earning $1m for just over a month. Whoah!
This is the new dawn. This is the new benchmark. And once I got to be part of it, having missed the first season through injury, it changed me and I changed it back.
It’s big, it’s big. It’s like nothing else cricket has ever seen. You’re a superstar, so many superstars, everyone there to see the stars shine and entertain them. Owners want the best players in their team, and if you’re a star player you will be treated like a Bollywood hero. And that makes you want to deliver – to stand out by performing as well, to win titles, to live up to the expectations.
No more old India. Still the noise and the heat and the chaos, but now something impossible on top of it all. Still the stadiums jam-pack, but now the colour and contrast turned up again. Still the madness, but this time you’re riding it, riding it. And that wave takes you to places, and those places take you to a whole new world . . .
I’m playing for Royal Challengers Bangalore, and we have a five-day break before our next match. What to do when you’re footloose and fancy being free?
Team manager George Avinash strolls over with some chat. You heard of Goa? You been to Goa? The boss has a place down there, the Kingfisher villa. He’d love you to go.
I’m having a few drinks with my team-mates. There’s A. B. de Villiers, Dan Vettori, Yuvraj Singh. Lots of talk, but you can tell there’s some huffing and bluffing going on. ‘Yeah, I’m definitely up for it, but I’ll make a call in the morning.’
Brunch the next day. ‘Right guys, time to go.’
And they back out. No one is going.
What to do? George pipes up again. ‘Believe me, big man, you should definitely check it out.’
Oh-kay. What could possibly go wrong?
So I decide to go by myself. Fly down there, picked up in a sweet car and driven to Candolim, come down the driveway and whaaat?
It’s bigger than most hotels. It’s cooler than any house I’ve ever seen. It’s James Bond, it’s Playboy Mansion, it’s the land of plenty in white concrete and glass. I’m trying not to stare, but there’s so much to stare at that there’s only room in my mind for one thought: ‘Chris, this gonna be interesting . . .’
I’ve got the entire villa for myself. I’m getting a tour. Wherever I go I’ve got two butlers walking with me at all times. Me alone, like a king!
I go in the first pool. I go in the second pool. I walk the lawn, in my robe. I go back in the pool with a Kingfisher beer and then I stay in the pool and the Kingfisher beers keep coming, which makes sense because the one place they’re not going to run out of Kingfisher beers is in the Kingfisher villa.
I take a golf cart and drive around. The cook wants to know what I’d like to eat.
‘What are the options?’
‘Anything you want.’
‘Yeah man, but what’s on the menu?’
‘There is no menu, sir. You are the menu.’
This is new for World Boss. Seems there is World Boss and Universe Boss. Whole new worlds. Bosses of things the boy from 1C St James Road, Rollington Town, didn’t even know existed. No milk and Nutribun, although if you wanted milk and Nutribun they’d bring it to you.
They drive me into town. A few bars, some drinking, some dancing. Secret stories, strangers to meet, liaisons and adventures. Walking the beaches, having some seafood, soaking it up.
I pop into a tattoo parlour, just to look around. The guy literally begs me. ‘Please let me give you a tattoo. Please . . .’
‘Okay, I’ll send a driver.’
So we pick him up and bring him out to the villa. I’m in the gym, in the Kingfisher villa, doing some bicep curls while having a tattoo. Food is cooking, he’s drawing me a dragon.
We take a break, eat some food. Tattoo Man starts to relax. He starts to kick back.
‘What we eat next?’
‘Hey Tattoo Man – hello? I need to work my lats. You’re taking a bit too long! Come on!’
But he wants to make sure it’s perfect, so he’s getting the detail in and the eyes are narrowed and the focus is there.
‘Yeah man, sweet work, let’s order dessert. That the teeth? Fierce. Maybe no more drink for you though, yeah?’
A dragon on my hand, I’m curling, I’m burping.
Don’ worry ’bout what might happen. If di ball dere, hit it . . .
Into the villa’s private movie theatre. Into the garage, so many cars, a Mercedes so big I can’t even work out what it is. But it’s not the cars that catch my eye, it’s this big bike, three-wheeler, Harley-Davidson. And I get the story about how Vijay Mallya got the bike.
He’s driving through the States, and he sees a guy riding it. He tells the guy he wants the bike. And he’s the boss, the Mallya Boss. What he wants, he gets. So he asks the guy how much it would take to sell it, literally climb off it right there and give it to him, and the guy names his price, and Mallya counts out the bills and buys it. Has it shipped back to India, and then down to Goa and the villa.
So straight away I jump on this bike. I’ve never ridden a motorbike before. I’ve never seen a motorbike with three wheels. But one of the butlers shows me how to drive it, and I start riding it up and down the driveway, which because this is the Kingfisher villa is the size of a racetrack. Brrrrm!
I feel like the Terminator, screeching around with my shirt open and my shades down and nah, no helmet, because it’s warm and it’s a Harley and it’s the Kingfisher villa and I’m the king of the villa, the Kingfisher king, and woo-hoo, who knew this thing could go that fast?
The butler signals. ‘Does sir want to take it on the open road?’
‘NO WAY!’
‘Sir?’
‘Nah! I ain’t taking the chance. I’ll just take it round the driveway one more time.’
Pause.
‘I will have a rum and Coke though, yeah? And the movie theatre – I can just pick any film I want, right?’ Brrrrm!
The butlers won’t leave my side. Just walk. I won’t even finish my drink and the next one will be in my hand.
Every morning I wake up and they ask me what I’d like to do.
‘Would sir like to ride an elephant?’
‘You got an elephant here?’
Now even Vijay Mallya doesn’t own his own elephant. But he’s good friends with a man who does, so soon I’m riding an elephant, which has less of the speed of the Harley but all the same swagger.
I don’t want to leave. I have to leave.
When I got back I told the guys all about it. Right after checking the tournament schedule for the next five-day gap.
The reaction: ‘Oh shit . . .’
One of my best moments in India. A beautiful time. One of the best times. Ever since I’m in love with Goa.
‘They should play cricket here. Why don’t we play cricket here?’
In Rollington Town we would hustle for cents and jump fences for the dream of a dollar.
Stealing those bottles from unguarded yards and the Lucas pavilion when ‘Sorro’ Watson was out and away. Clinking and clanking along to Lecky’s on the corner of Fernandez Avenue and Jackson Road to get back the deposit, trumping up the funds for chicken back and dumplings and time to run a boat.
In teenage years the legit stuff but never the big payday. A summer job from Sorro cleaning the empty swimming pool at the National Stadium, scrubbing under the gutters, bruising on fingers. Out in the hot sun cleaning the netball court, picking leaves and weeds out of the cracks and corners.
It paid $300 Jamaican a week, about £1.70 today. No matter how much you want to run a boat, it’s hard to get motivated and moving for that kind of cash.
You wanted something in your back pocket. At Excelsior there was an old boy called Jordan, a real entrepreneur, who used to sell home-made snacks to kids after cricket training. Not being able to stretch to rice and peas, I would have to settle for his coffee strip – a lump of cake – and maybe half a suck-suck drink. Jordan had been there so long he claimed he sold the same to Courtney Walsh when he was a pupil there. ‘Remember bwoy – when you made it, don’ forget mi like Courtney Walsh!’
It still didn’t make me want to sweat round that netball court. When no one was looking, I would climb up on the roof for a sleep or stretch out in the shade under the almond trees. I had a code for it so I could tell John Murphy or Kevin Murray without being rumbled: ‘Bredren, mi off fi play an innings . . .’
On and on, and early months in the West Indies team. I didn’t even ask for a pay-cheque, because as a youngster you’re scared, you don’t want anyone to say you’re in for the money. So I was talking to Nehemiah Perry, the players I knew from Jamaica. Just quietly – ‘You get your pay for the tour?’
‘Yeah man.’
Quietly still – ‘Mi nah get mine.’
‘What yuh mean, yuh nah get your money? Pick up di phone an’ call such an’ such.’
So I call, and the big financial man answers. They’d had my pay for a month, just sitting there on a cheque. ‘Ah, sorry about that . . .’
So when it arrived, $7,000 – ‘Wooo! T’anks very!’
I was just happy to be in the team. I had no idea. This is the money you get for doing this?
I’d always said the first thing I would do when I had a little money was to buy a house. Turned out I bought a car first. A Toyota Mark II.
‘Lissen, mi tek nuff buses now, maybe I’ll bend a bit an’ buy car, so I can move around with di practice an’ games an’ everyting . . .’
On and on again, and the magic kingdom of the IPL. Magic numbers are mentioned – $800,000. I’d never seen that kind of money in my life. I had barely dreamed of holding such money.
And I get injured.
We played Sri Lanka in a three-match ODI series, won the first two games and went to St Lucia for the third game, me knowing that the next day I was due to fly to India, and that night I pulled my groin.
Oh fuck. It all flashed in front of my face – the house, cars for Popeye and Kevin Murray, houses for my mum and Michelle Crew and Michael Crew and Andrew and Wayney and all of them.
I still went over there hoping something could happen, but it didn’t work out. Came back home, with just a little but nothing extraordinary, and I thought the only way my head might not explode would be if my heart did first. You don’t know at that stage what’s going to happen in the future. You don’t know there will be a second chance, and a second coming.
There is a second, and a third, and a fourth and beyond. And don’t believe it’s a stroll, a retirement home, a big house on easy street. That money comes with a burden.
The IPL is the hardest league to play in in the world. Reason I say that, you can go there with a dirty attitude and say, I’m getting this amount and this and that, but if I were getting that amount and not performing, I would feel bad. I would feel like I didn’t deserve it. Not only is every match as intense as anything you will experience anywhere in world cricket, it genuinely hurts when you don’t perform and it hurts when you lose a game, because that price tag makes you want to be at the top at all times.
You meet the owners, you love the owners. Kolkata Knight Riders, run by Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, plus actress Juhi Chawla and her husband Jay Mehta. Playing at Eden Gardens, showbiz and dazzle and we love to have you here. Vijay Mallya at RCB, the same respect as Kolkata, the same remarkable hospitality.
Vijay Mallya and Shah Rukh are two of the coolest people I’ve ever met. Easy to talk to, easy-going and very, very chill. They’re making you feel at home. At the same time you’re making a lot of money. You don’t want to go out there and not perform, so you have to be on your ‘A’ game. It forces you to raise your bar. The way they look after you, make sure you get everything you want, make sure everything is in order for you, you definitely want to perform. So your intensity and your game get an uplift from the IPL. This is no retirement home. It’s a reach-higher zone.
And it inspires me to great things.
After the one-day World Cup in India in 2011, I pick up an injury, miss a few games and come back home. There I hear the West Indies coach, Ottis Gibson, doing an interview blaming our exit on senior players not playing their part.
I say to myself, how can he pass a remark like that? I’m a senior player. I was injured. I still tried to play with my injury. To hear such a thing like that is so wrong.
I try to clear my brain. I don’t keep extra baggage. It happen an’ it pass an’ gone. A series is coming up against Pakistan. At the same time the IPL auction is due. I’m not picked up in it, and I’m somewhat surprised. ‘What ’appen ’ere?’
News from India. They say they received information from the West Indies Cricket Board that I won’t be available, because I would have commitments with the national side. Okay. No problem.
So I’m at home doing my rehab, getting fit, in touch with the physio, C. J. Clarke, communicating with BBM messages and letting him know how I’m progressing, because I want to make the Pakistan series. And then, all of a sudden, the communication from their end stops. Soon after, I see the squad named. No Chris.
No one has called me to explain why I wasn’t selected. I was telling the physio that I was running, that I was getting better, that I’m batting, that I’m ready. I’m not even invited to the pre-series training camp, where they can assess me and say, Chris, I don’t think you’re fit enough, we can’t select you. But nothing.
And I am pissed about that. Denied one, denied another. Stuck in Jamaica, I react as I always will – meeting darkness with light. Off to nightclubs, partying partying, out with Wavell Hinds, every night.
We’re together in this club, music going, dancing, on the Hennessy, Friday night becoming Saturday morning, and my phone starts ringing with an Indian number. George Avinash, Anil Kumble, Vijay Mallya from RCB, calling.
‘Are you fit?’
All of this happening in a nightclub. I look around the nightclub.
‘Yeah I’m fit.’
‘You’re ready to play?’
I look at my Hennessy. ‘Yeah I’m ready to play.’
‘Right, we need you to come to India tomorrow.’
‘Yeah. Tomorrow is a Saturday, I need a visa, how is that possible?’
‘Don’t worry, it’s already been arranged. Take your passport and go to the embassy, it’ll be ready for you. We’ll speak in the morning.’
Whoah, is this for real? To get a call in a nightclub to come down to India right away? I finish off my night. No rush. Reach back home the next morning, sleep. I talk to my sister, to my friends. What you guys think? They all speak with one voice: go. Okay, I’m going to go. To the embassy, to the visa that is waiting, to the flight tickets prepared. Pack my bags, on a plane on Sunday.
Now, to play in the IPL, you need your national governing body to sign an NOC – a no-objection certificate. It’s official clearance for you to play, part of the deal the IPL made with the game’s mighty and powerful. I’m clearly not wanted by the West Indies, so there can’t be a problem.
But there is. The NOC lands, and suddenly everyone is scampering around. Chris is going to the IPL? It creates a big scene, a big scene. And more is to follow.
Straight to India. I haven’t picked up a cricket bat for a month. Straight to Bangalore, straight to the middle, new team, new ball, facing my old team Kolkata. And I mash a 100, off 55 balls.
I think, God, it is only you alone made this happen. Because I don’t know how on earth I score a hundred in that game. Trus’ mi. No preparation, no practice at all, man of the match, winning all the categories. One of the most spectacular things that ever happen to me.
Back home, other remarks and interviews are going on. Everybody diving in with their angry thoughts. ‘Why is Chris Gayle there and not here?’ All chaos an’ everyting break loose.
I am in my hotel room in Bangalore, listening to the slander online, the anger growing and growing. There’s a talk show on Jamaican radio that everyone listens to. Criticism and foolish talk against me. So I call in from India. And I go berserk.
Walking up down in the room like a crazy man, spitting fire down the phone. Like a boss speaking to a bad employee, like World Boss speaking to World Fool.
I slam the coach. I slam the system. I slam the physio and everybody. About how I have been treated, about how it makes me feel. The radio show is supposed to finish, and then they make an announcement: this radio show is not going to finish now. Extend the radio show!
I was telling the truth. And that kept me out of West Indies cricket for a year and a half. But it opened more doors for me, because I could play on in the IPL, and score how many thousands of runs around the world.
And maybe that was the best form time in my life. Scoring runs ridiculously. 107 off 49 balls against the Kings. 89 off 47 against Mumbai. Top run-scorer in IPL that season; an average of 67; a strike rate of 183, top of that table too. Man of tournament. RCB went from bottom of the table to two finals – the IPL final and the Champions League final. The coach, Ray Jennings, told me straight: ‘Chris, you’re a life-saver. You saved my job. You have no idea what you have done for the team, and me from a personal point of view.’ And it all very pleasant an’ very good.
And it all came from all that, all sprang from that ugly mess. From darkness came light.
The IPL is big. Being at the centre of the IPL is bigger than you can imagine.
It’s difficult to leave the hotel, because you will get mobbed. It’s difficult to use the hotel lobby, because they’ll mob you there too. I’ll go down to the bar occasionally, but even then you have to get security to lock off an area for you. Gayle coming through, storm hatches down.
Look, I’m a tall and built man in India. There’s not many people who look like me. And the sunglasses don’t hide you. They know your walk. Anything you will put on as a disguise – cap, funky hat, straitlaced clothes – as soon as one person spot you, you’re history. 20,000 people will know in a minute.
Words fly. The first person looks at you. He turns to a stranger. ‘That’s Chris Gayle!’ I look back at them. ‘Shhh!’ Too late already. Before my lips have moved that stranger has told five more strangers. As my finger comes to my lips those five have told five more each. Autographs multiplying at crazy speed. Selfies for every self.
I’d love to walk the streets, because India is such a lovely place, and there are so many sights to see. But that’s something you just can’t do. Going to the cricket ground is already all hustle. Everybody want to touch you, everybody want pictures with you.
When you order room service in India, three guys come in holding one tray. Battling for the handles, carrying a piece of paper and a pen. ‘Sign here. And also here, and here on this T-shirt.’
Fights to bring you room service. The housecleaners will knock on your door at all times. ‘Room cleaning? Bathroom checking? Minibar?’ You put up the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign. Still your door will be knocking. ‘Everything okay sir? Sir need anything? . . . Yes sir – just making sure no one is disturbing you?’
Don’t get me wrong. A man can have fun.
Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Cuttack, Delhi, Dharamsala, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Nagpur.
All cities I have played in with the IPL, some of them I had never heard of before it. A geography education as well as an employment, a tourist visa as well as a working one. Dharamsala, with the snowy mountains as a backdrop and clear blue skies and cool crisp air, a beautiful place to play cricket.
Sometimes you get to a ground – ‘Have I been here before? Yeah man, I remember these dressing-rooms.’ Sometimes the ground fool you. ‘Those stands weren’t there before. It can’t have been Cuttack I was thinking of. What, they built them last month?’
So many new team-mates to meet. At Kolkata there were David Hussey, Shoaib Akhtar and Brendon McCullum. You’ve been used to staring them down in international cricket, and now your eyes are meeting over the breakfast pancake stash.
You take a while to gel. And because many of the more established names would have their families there, I used to hang more with the young Indian guys, and what brought us together was poker. Lots of poker.
Ashok Dinda, Rohan Gavaskar, Manoj Tiwary, Cheteshwar Pujara. Every single night, and because I don’t sleep at night, I mean the late night. Nothing else was there to do. So the routine was get the crew together, start the poker and start the new day in style.
We would decide whose room, order hot chocolate and coffee and biscuits and naan, like some Bangalore hotel version of a Lucas run a boat, and then play play play. We played for cash, for rupees, and for proper money. Proper pots. Run some jokes, ease the day.
Don’t worry about it messing our body-clocks for the cricket. IPL matches start at 8 p.m. and go on late, so everything shifts later and later. Game, hotel, dinner, and then poker through to dawn and beyond, on to 7 a.m. Then I’ll eat my breakfast and then I’ll go to my bed.
The youngsters come around me because they know I’m the clown. I will talk a lot of crap, I will lift the moods. Come match-time and the journey from hotel to ground, I’ll sit at the back of the bus. Back of the bus is the fun part of the bus, so that’s my spot. Where’s the teacher? Where’s the coach? Exactly. Front of the bus. We’re down the back.
I eased my way into the IPL. In 2009 I averaged 28, with a highest score of 44. In 2010 I averaged 32 – fine, but no blast them apart.
There were reasons. I never had a full season with Kolkata. I always had to leave early for West Indies duty, and I would be in and out of the team.
Sourav Ganguly was the captain. I opened the batting with him, and Kolkata is his town, so you don’t get the strike when you’re batting with Ganguly, and you can’t say anything because he’s Ganguly, the king of Kolkata. So sometimes you get six overs into the innings, and you’ve only faced 10 balls. Ups and downs. And not many quick singles.
And then the phone call from RCB while in the nightclub with Wavell, and it blew the whole thing open.
Bangalore had originally picked an Aussie journeyman, Dirk Nannes. Only when he got injured did they realize I might still be available. I owe Dirk a little thank-you. Come to Triple Century, Dirk. Settle in for the night and leave your wallet at home.
And so it was sprung open. 2011, 102 in my first match. Another century to follow, an 89 off 47 balls. The tournament’s top scorer, despite missing several games, the highest strike rate, man of the tournament. Six Machine in town.
2012, and Six Machine gets to serious work. Even after a groin injury slows my start, I end up with 39 more sixes than KP, the man second in the table. Not even a contest.
That’s a lot of sixes hit, but when you’re in good form you pick up the line of the ball early. You get in position. I don’t always plan to hit sixes. I don’t think about it. I just let it flow, sometime more so when the game’s on the boil. Your run rate will be up there, you know you need boundaries, and when you’re batting down in the death the sixes are going to come. Because you’re set, and you’re just going going going.
Five of them come just that way, and in something of a burst. We are playing Pune, and they have posted a spicy 182. For 12 overs they then keep me and Virat Kohli on the leash. At one stage we have scored just 30 off 35 deliveries. We need 111 more runs off just 50 balls. Kohli gets caught in the deep, and on comes Rahul Sharma – the man with one of the best economy rates in the league, a man whose previous over in this match had gone for only four.
Time to get back in the game. Time to get back in the flow.
I stroll onto strike for his second ball, right-arm leg spin coming over the wicket. Crash – six. Right into my zone – six. With some variety on the ball now – six more. With some variety of a different variety – six more.
It’s not about reading the spin. Once you’re in the zone as a batsman, it doesn’t matter what variety or delivery a bowler come with; you’re already in the holy place, so you can pick it instinctively. The magic is there. And the magic is all around me on this night.
The noise starts big and then keeps going big. You hit one six, they want another. You hit two, they demand three. They always want one more, and this day I’m going to give it to them.
After four sixes, one ball left, I’m asking myself, do I try to get a single to keep the strike? ‘Nah, let’s keep going with it.’ Sharma around the wicket, going wide of the crease, going wide to me. So I hit another six. Maximize the over.
From 37 runs off 35 balls to 67 runs off 50. Back on the board, back on track. AB and Saurabh Tiwary lash 24 off the final over, and home we are and here we go.
2012’s a good year. The first man in history to hit three centuries in the IPL, the highest run-scorer in the tournament for the second year in a row, an average of 61. And then comes 2013, the golden year in the golden helmet.
Pune come to meet us again. Pune and pain seem to go together.
The day before I am awake all night. I go to bed at 7 a.m. and sleep all day. When the eyelids flutter, a breakfast/dinner of pancakes and a hot chocolate. Usain won his first Olympic gold on chicken nuggets; I prepare my own World Boss world record on room service pancakes, with the syrup and the settings and everything.
More sleep, then a lot of water to drink, because I find that when your body hydrates it will actually let you think more too. Drain it and you become weak. So water, another snooze, down to the team room for a 10-minute meeting, then straight on the bus.
Darkness all around, brightness and big noise under the floodlights. We lose the toss and get put into bat, which you can understand, because Bangalore is always a good wicket to bat on, and so most teams want to chase there.
To the middle, boom! First over, and straight away the ball just come on nice to the bat. Cover drive, get off the mark.
After eight balls we have a rain interruption. I am already on nine, and I’ve only faced five deliveries. We come off the field and sit in the dressing-room, just talking. Just talking to my mate and West Indies team-mate Ravi Rampaul.
I say, ‘Ravi Rampaul, lissen mi. Dat wicket out dere is so sw-eeet!’
My exact words. ‘Dat wicket a one-seventy, one-eighty track. Nuttin’ less.’ But I am talking about the team total, not an individual’s score. ‘In order to win this game, Ravi, we’ll need one-eighty.’
We go back out there, onto that pitch that’s so sweet. And straight away – boom! I go straight back into the zone again. From ball one. A free hit, a four, and I’m going berserk, berserk – boom boom boom, quick quick quick. Two left-arm spinners in the attack, to 50 off 17 balls.
Something’s happening here. Something is really happening.
The Aussie all-rounder Mitchell Marsh comes on in the Powerplay over. I take him for a couple of sixes, I take him for 28 in that single over. He bowls another over, so I get stuck into that as well.
Ishwar Pandey, on for his first over in this year’s IPL. He’s the leading wicket-taker in that year’s Ranji Trophy, the national first-class competition. His first six balls go for 21.
Ali Murtaza, in for his first match of the season. Welcome, Ali. He gets two overs and 45 runs of punishment before getting the heave-ho too. Beatin’ it, beatin’ it.
Aaron Finch is the Pune in-pain captain. He’s in the middle overs and out of options. ‘Who’s gonna bowl? Who’s gonna bowl?’
I see him look at Yuvraj, and Yuvraj looks at him incredulous. ‘I’m not going near this!’
Nobody else wants to bowl. Heads down all round the field, bowlers suddenly fascinated by their toes, or – wow, what’s that in the stands? or – hmm, look at this callus here on my spinning finger, better get a close look at it.
And that’s when Finch has to take the ball himself. Yuvraj will tell me afterwards: ‘I told him not to bowl. I told him not to bowl. Don’t do it!’ But no one else wants it, so Finch has no choice. ‘Don’t bowl, skip!’
So I get stuck into him as well. Looping up, smashed away. Fired in, smashed away. Slower and cunning, smashed away. Faster and desperate, smashed away. Four sixes and a four. In that single over my score jumps from 67 to 95. Cheers, Aaron!
Dinda bowls me a no-ball, a low full toss, and I hit it straight back over his head, almost on the roof of the stand. Straight onto the shingles and shoot a load of them out.
That’s the century, off 30 balls, with 11 sixes. I’ve only faced seven dot balls. I’ve only taken four singles.
Six Machine, he’s in town . . .
Once again it’s my old partner Dilshan down the other end. He has dropped anchor, but he may as well have dropped his bat. When I brought up our 50 I had scored 44 of them. When we reached 100 he had contributed just 11 of them.
I could continue going berserk. I could continue blitzing it. Instead I decide to play it properly. We still have a lot of overs to bat, so I just take my time, and make sure a set batter is there at the end. That’s my thinking. I ease off the berserking.
Luke Wright comes on to bowl, so I slow things down a bit. It’s all relative, but my 150 takes another 27 balls to bring up, although I’m now on 16 sixes. AB is joining the fun too. Eight balls for 30 runs. Proper licks, serious licks.
I could have got 200 runs, easily. Easily. Because normally you keep the set batter on strike. But everybody came in and started to play shots, and I couldn’t get on strike.
So I had to settle for 175 not out. The highest score ever made in T20, the fastest ever century, 154 of those runs coming in boundaries.
You look at it and break it down and say it should always be the team, so 175 was less important than 233-5. But imagine psychologically getting the 200! I’m out there, I’m in the beautiful groove, the magic is at my side and at my back. 25 more runs? I could have made that in an over.
I didn’t mind; it’s only when I look back at it and analyse it that I realize the 200 was in the making easily. I had no idea of the records I was smashing. I don’t know records. I’ve been involved in a lot of them, but someone will have to dig them out and tell me. I’ve never targeted a record.
But to speak the truth, it was amazing. It was spectacular. And we bowled them out cheaply, and I got two wickets for five runs, so that was my day, and I made the best of it.
It didn’t hit me that night. It didn’t soak in. Just another innings, just another game. I didn’t sit back, but we did kick on. I was tired, but we hit the bar on the top floor of the hotel and rode that wave.
Only with the dawn did it start to sink in, dawn and looking again at my phone. It was the most messages I’ve ever received – those who do text you, those who seldom have, those who never even appeared on your phone.
You could see the messages piling through. BlackBerry Messenger – beep! beep! beep! Blowing off, everything blowing off. Phone shaking and vibrating, ready to burst.
It took me two days to read them. And there were so many I couldn’t answer them individually – I just had to send out a broadcast, saying, ‘Thank you all . . .’
Funnily enough, when I started talking after the game, and you talk to a lot of people, everybody had a story with that innings. It’s like the world come to a complete stop. I’ve heard a lot of important meetings were halted for that innings. People were driving and had to pull over to find the nearest bar to watch it. Sometime the entire store got shut down so people could drive home to then pull over to then watch it in the nearest bar.
Everybody have a particular story. Just like when Usain ran his 9.58 seconds in Berlin. On and on, and so thrilling to listen to people telling what they were doing on that particular day. A lot of phone calls being made, a lot of plans being cancelled. A lot of mouths being left open.
Darren Bravo has a story. He was in bed at home, and normally he listens to the radio as he wakes up. And as it came on, all he could hear was shouting. ‘Everybody stop what you doing! Gayle is doing dis an’ dat! Gayle going crazy!’
Everybody rushed to their TV in the early morning. It went crazy all over the world that day. There was a sweet quote from the Los Angeles Times, which is not known for going big on its coverage of my sport: ‘Gayle scored the fastest 100 in the history of pro cricket, after just 30 pitches.’
And it was like Usain’s 9.58 seconds. Just as people watched him yellow-blur across the line that night, glanced at the giant infield clock and couldn’t process the numbers – 9.58 for the 100 metres? Why is there a point five in there? Nine what? – so it was with the 175. How much? Sorry, I thought this was a T20. Oh fuck – it is T20!
You look at the IPL and you think all of us will keep going back to the well, year after year. Spinners in their early 40s, batsmen playing on at an age when Tests are no longer in the legs and one-dayers are one step too far.
Maybe we will. But time catches with safe hands. A back injury slowed me for a few years; other parts of your life come into focus. A new focus, a new family.
You need the same powerful energy and strong vibes, the same deep passion. It doesn’t make sense going through the motions to play, and it doesn’t work. You’ve got to want to do it, and want to do well. You have to have the same passion for the game you love as if you were just starting.
Because the IPL changes you, and it changes your attitude to the world.
Just as it has brought so much joy within cricket, it has taken away the fight between the players. It has taken away the sledging.
Unity. You become friends with your cartoon enemy. Sharing dressing-rooms, hotels and buses with men you knew only as opponents, you build a conversation. It’s kind of hard to sit next to someone for dinner every night for four weeks and then go out a month later and call them all the names under the skies. The IPL has drawn that sting from the game. So if you see sledging now, those two players definitely don’t like each other. That something will be personal.
You’d think it might give rivalries a new twist. Six Machine in the same team as A. B. de Villiers, Six Machine alongside Brendon McCullum. Who can shine the brightest? Who can be the wrecking-ball that demolishes the most attacks in the smallest amount of time?
There’s no competition from my side. It’s not the way I work. I always bat on my own capabilities, on the situation of the game we’re playing. Sometimes the media will try to compare certain things we do and bring more excitement to a match, throw a little more spice things on top. But it’s media hype, not personal hype. The big battle is against the bowlers, not your own.
And you forge new bonds. You form new friendships.
Muttiah Muralitharan I knew as one of the greatest bowlers in the game’s long history. Now I know him as Murali, and while I respected Muralitharan, I love Murali.
One of the best cricketers I’ve come across: able to read the game so well, a good thinker, great game awareness. And that’s just the cricket.
Murali is a man who never stops talking. Any topic at all you talk about, Murali has a solution for it. Sport, politics, the economy, social issues. He knows everything. If you’re unsure or arguing about anything, Murali’s the go-to man. For any scenario.
Every time I see him, always a smile on his face, always the same greeting: ‘Macha!’ A Sri Lankan thing, Sinhalese. ‘Chrees! Macha!’
I love to be around him, because he makes me laugh. In the hotel, guys will be coming in late at night from a club. And if you whisper in the corridor, a door will fly open and Murali’s head pop out with that big grin on. ‘Hello macha!’ Everybody will just drop and laugh. ‘Murali, you should be sleeping!’ Three o’clock in the morning. ‘How you hear me out here?’
‘Muli Muli Muli!’ The best cricketer I’ve come across. I’ll take Murali any day, anywhere.
For all the fun, for all the friendships, the IPL drives us on.
There was a time when one batsman scoring 100 in a T20 match seemed impossible. Did that. There was a time when 150 was out of reach. 175 didn’t even make sense as a number to see on the scorecard.
So believe me when I say a double century is a possibility. What you need to understand is how it might come about.
I see what each innings brings once I am in it. To go out there and bat for 200 is never going to work. You won’t get it like that.
It’s all about the zone, the moment, the timing and magic. And that’s when it comes in, and if the opportunity present itself then you try and take it. I certainly don’t plan it. I wait and see. If the magic is there, take a shot at it and see where you can go.
Benchmarks have already been turned to dust. Even the fact that people are talking about a 200 goes to show what an impact you make.
You get asked if someone could score a century off the minimum number of balls theoretically possible. I take that as a compliment, but 17 consecutive sixes won’t happen. That’s like going to the moon and back. On Vijay Mallya’s three-wheeled Harley.
There was a time when a 30-ball century seemed impossible. There was a point when a 9.58-second 100 metres seemed impossible.
But when Usain ran 9.58 he didn’t plan for 9.58. It was all about the zone and the timing and the atmosphere and scenario. The magic moment. How you feel confident within yourself at the time. It just happened naturally. And when you glance back you see the record and say, wow!
If you say, ‘Lissen mi, I’m gonna smash past two hundred, I’m gonna run 9.55,’ you won’t get it. Instead it is about quiet knowledge and deep confidence. It is about understanding when the moment is upon you and understanding what to do in that sacred storm.
Within yourself: ‘I’ve done it already, I can do it again.’ That’s the thinking, really and truly.