The Chris Gayle Phenomenon - Cricket's Babe Ruth and Twenty20's Don Bradman

Babe Ruth, Chris Gayle and Don Bradman

These are not comparisons that should be made lightly. Sir Donald Bradman conquered his game in almost the same way that Babe Ruth, the master of sport’s other bat and ball game – baseball – did his. Both were unrivalled giants of their era, and their records and achievements still stand the test of time today.

If there is a modern day equal though, Chris Gayle’s dominance of Twenty20 is surely it. The self-styled “World Boss” has fused the indomitable run-scoring of Bradman with the charisma of Ruth to create a towering persona that makes him feared by those who face him, while adored by those fortunate enough to watch him.

The 35-year-old Jamaican has gotten better with age, and the emergence of the freelance T20 cricketer has allowed him to travel the globe doing what he does best.

Now into its 13th year as an official format, the T20 format used to have batsmen blessed with either immense power or admirable consistency, but never both. Until Gayle.

Racking up the runs

The Caribbean crusher is closing in on 8,000 T20 runs; only two others have surpassed 6,000 – Brad Hodge and Brendon McCullum. And it’s worth pointing out that while the latter has played a solitary game less than Gayle, the former has participated in 21 more.

If that wasn’t impressive enough, out of the 40 leading run-scorers in T20 cricket, Gayle’s 43.54 average is the highest of all. Shaun Marsh is the only other that boasts an average above 40, while just a further eight have made it over 35.

Then there are the milestones. While the Indian Premier League (IPL) loves to obsess over 30s, Gayle allows us to easily trade in the more traditional fifties and hundreds. The three-figure landmark is one that taunts and teases most, but not the West Indian. With 15 centuries, Gayle has recorded two and a half times as many as the next best – McCullum – who has managed six, while David Warner (five) and Luke Wright (four) are the only others to have more than a trio to their name.

When considering innings in excess of 50, Gayle’s tally stands at an imposing 64. Warner and Hodge have acquired 49 and 44 respectively but apart from that, nobody else has registered 40.

Taking into account that Gayle has played 208 T20 innings, 64 scores of 50-plus means that over 30% of his knocks have resulted in him making at least a half-century, which is staggering given the hit-and-miss nature of the game. Unsurprisingly, he also tops the chart for the highest individual score with 175, which he blasted for Royal Challengers Bangalore against Pune Warriors in the sixth season of IPL.

In short, Gayle accrues more runs than everybody else, he amasses them at a more rapid rate, and when he decides to cash in, he does so to an extent far beyond the capabilities of anyone else.

Packing a punch

If his sheer desire to accumulate makes him like Bradman, then it is his knack of slugging the ball that shows the parallels with Ruth. The New York Yankees legend pinged 714 career home runs, a number bested only by one clean batter – Hank Aaron – while his feat of 60 home runs in 1927 has also been beaten just once – by Roger Maris in 1961 (if you discount those who have used steroids).

Ruth had no genuine challengers in his prime, and nearly a century on he still doesn’t. That alone cements him as one of sport’s most dominant athletes at the crease or the plate.

So let’s indulge in cricket’s power aspect, and sixes in particular. With 553 sixes, Gayle has cracked more than twice as many as any other T20 cricketer ever, except Kieron Pollard, who trails by 190 despite batting in 43 more innings. McCullum, famed for his crash-bang-wallop mentality himself, has sent just 269 balls over the rope in as many innings as Gayle.

That aforementioned 175 in the IPL also brought with it the quickest ever hundred in T20s as well as professional cricket. The 30-ball blitz shaved four balls off Andrew Symonds’ record, which he set for Kent in 2004. To put into context how eye-popping both displays were, only five others make it into the sub-40 balls club.

It is a statistician's prerogative to manufacture his or her own statistics, so let me introduce the sixes-per-innings chart. A qualification barrier of 200 sixes grants 14 entrants, and while Pollard smacks a respectable 1.45 maximums per innings, Gayle blows him out of the water with an astonishing 2.66 – almost double.

Reverting to the more well-known strike-rate barometer, Gayle once again ranks right up there but on this occasion he is trumped by Pollard, who at 154.43 scores on average six more runs than Gayle per 100 deliveries. Part of that is probably due to the finisher role that Pollard generally adopts, which gives him more of a licence to attack unrestricted. In theory at least, by batting at the top Gayle has the responsibility to bat for a longer period.

Lighting up England

Right now, Gayle is bashing it to all parts in England’s T20 Blast competition for Somerset. So far he has played three games, hit 328 runs, spanked 29 sixes and been dismissed once. Incredibly, in the game his county lost, Gayle hammered 151 not out from a mere 62 balls, yet the Herculean performance couldn’t prevent a three-run defeat.

Admittedly, the grounds he has batted at so far – Taunton and Chelmsford – are miniscule, but that does little to distract from the size of Gayle’s achievements and the regularity with which they come. With his lowest score in the tournament so far an unbeaten 85, Somerset will be ruing the fact that he will soon be departing to play for the Jamaican Tallawahs in the Caribbean Premier League.

Another bygone great, W.G. Grace commanded a similar authority to Gayle, albeit in a totally contrasting style – it is of no doubt that the bearded wonder would have scoffed at the concept of T20. The famous Grace quote goes: “They’ve come here to watch me bat, not you bowl.”

Grace was right about his audience, and if Gayle were to make such an audacious claim, he would be right about his.

Whether it be snapping a selfie, swimming for the match ball, or simply a chance to watch him in the middle, people want to be entertained by Gayle, and he provides the closest thing to a sporting guarantee that there will ever be.

A born showman

Should the showman run out of ideas to thrill, let me point him to the “called shot”, a tale which speaks of a time when Ruth – in the midst of the 1932 World Series against the Chicago Cubs – apparently signalled when and where he would crunch a home run. The story remains ambiguous; no one quite knows for sure what Ruth meant by his pointing gesture. But if you try to think of anyone in the present day who could delve into such mischief, Gayle’s name is one of the first that springs to mind.

While more fallible in Tests and one-day internationals, in T20 cricket Christopher Henry Gayle is destined to become immortal. The statistics are mind boggling, in nearly every category – no matter the barometer, his name is invariably at the peak, and often by some margin.

He has the will to smash records like The Don, and the ability to court a crowd like The Babe. When Gayle bats in Twenty20 cricket we are witnessing history. History that may last decades, if not longer.