Explosive West Indian batter Chris Gayle has criticised batters, and in particular openers for taking their time in T20 Cricket and not going after the bowlers in powerplay, saying that they are killing the entertainment in the shortest format of the game.
Chris Gayle is unarguably among the best T20 batters, the world has ever witnessed. The explosive opener single-handedly has demolished the bowling line-ups of many teams and recently became the first batter to aggregate over 14,000 runs in T20 format.
There’s no denying the fact that the T20 format demands batters to go after the bowling right from the ball one and express themselves but in recent years, due to strategic adjustments, many openers have developed a pattern of opting conservative approach at first and then go after the bowlers once they assess the pitch.
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Chris Gayle, who is currently playing Abu Dhabi T10 league, feels that T20 cricket has slowed down dramatically but the inception of the T10 format has raised that bar a bit.
“I think, with T10 cricket, that’s how T20 cricket started. From the first over, batters used to go but T20 cricket has slowed down dramatically and T10 cricket has now raised the bar a bit.
“They’re killing the entertainment in T20 cricket, straight up, because in those first six overs, we can get more as openers but guys are taking their own time,” Chris Gayle said.
Gayle said that batters these days bat to get a score, which in turn takes fire away from their batting in the first six overs. He remarked that this is not the case in T10 cricket and hopefully they’ll see more of this format around.
“Sometimes they bat to get a score and they take away from the fire they should be bringing to the batting department in the first six overs, but T10 is spot on and hopefully, we’ll see more T10 coming around,” he said.
Chris Gayle said that he doesn’t know the reason behind batters being ‘cagey’ during the first six overs and recalled how the batters used to go from the ball one when T20 cricket started.
He added that batters should go hard right from the first over and continue the entertainment and aggression in the first six overs.
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“I don’t know why batters get so cagey during the first six overs. When T20 cricket started, guys were going from ball one, if you really check the history of T20 cricket looking back on it.
“I don’t like that fact, I think we should go hard, keep the entertainment that is within the game of T20 cricket and continue to keep that aggression in the first six overs,” he said.
Chris Gayle is representing Team Abu Dhabi in the ongoing Abu Dhabi T10 League. His team is on the top of the table with five wins out of their six games. The southpaw so far has scored 125 runs in 4 matches at a strike rate of 198.41 and is 9th on the list of leading run-scorer.
(PTI inputs)
