Chris Gayle wants to be back for Test cricket: Is the T20 bubble bursting?

Chris Gayle is the ultimate bang-bang player. The ball leaves his bat like a shot from a cannon. His entire approach is similarly destructive – he has taken teams apart single-handedly.

Turning his back on Test cricket, Gayle is the ultimate embodiment of the modern T20 player. Forget long days in the field, the only thing he chases is the next bank-busting contract.

But while such an approach might fill the coffers, how empty does it leave the heart? T20 is many things – quickfire, exciting, fun - but it could never be described as pure. This is lust not love, a questionable liaison carried out in a cheap hotel.

As a cricketer, is it really possible to indulge in a non-stop T20 whirl and not come out the other end feeling ever so slightly grubby? Gayle, a man who plays in a format of 40 overs, has this week been musing on a return to one which potentially has 450.

“I don’t want to walk away and retire just like that from Test cricket,” says the man-mountain, who played the last of his 103 Tests in July 2014. With the clock ticking, he wants to reaffirm his vows before it’s too late.

Gayle’s desire to reacquaint himself with the longest format inevitably raises a question. What level of sporting satisfaction, in the long-term, can T20 bring a top level cricketer? How many others who play T20 aplenty have a big hole inside? A hole that can only really and honestly be filled by testing their talent on the ultimate stage? After all, do actors measure their worth on their glory days in the cinema, or those final few years in a soap?

Michael Holding makes a similar point. “I have never seen a cartoon character being nominated for an Oscar,” notes the West Indies fast-bowling legend. "Test cricket is cricket," he continues. "Simple. Twenty20 is entertainment.”

Its gravitas to the players is surely no better illustrated than by the fact they are only too willing to be microphoned-up to chat to commentators WHILE PLAYING in T20. Imagine a player agreeing to that in a Test match! T20 is knockabout, here today, gone tomorrow. Ultimately, aside from bums on seats, it has no point.

Other big players have walked away from T20 cricket. Ricky Ponting turned his back on the IPL, preferring to focus instead on the 2009 Ashes series in England (bearing in mind the result, he may well have wished he’d taken the money). Michael Clarke has done the same. You’d have a difficult job to find two men more proud to represent their country. Forget a T20 knockabout – whatever the financial lures.

Of course, Clarke and Ponting played in an international team that was a sporting powerhouse. Gayle was part of a West Indies outfit whose slide down the rankings was barely believable to those who could recall them in their not-too-distant pomp. Add in boardroom turmoil and perhaps we shouldn’t judge too harshly those who prefer the dollar over the dispute.

And perhaps we shouldn’t also assume that Gayle is a man lacking the will to spend a long time at the wicket. His 7,214 Test runs include two two triple-centuries, 15 tons, and 37 fifties. His 333 against Sri Lanka in Gaulle in 2010 lasted nearly 11 hours. There is more to this man than blood and thunder.

Gayle is more than capable of playing a long innings

Similarly, Gayle, aged 37, is seeking a return to the Test arena, with ambitions. “I will play again,” he says. “I want to score 400 runs in a Test match. I’ve done two triples, I think I can push it to four hundred.” Wear a crash hat if you’re in the crowd when that happens.

“A lot of people want to see me back in Test cricket,” states Gayle, “a lot of people.” He’s surely not wrong, and in a young side which showed at Headingley this week what it can do, he could be the old-timer providing a reassuring presence at the top of the order. Indeed, Gayle has talked previously of helping young West Indian players rise up the ranks.

Maybe the 37-year-old's utterances this week will leave others questioning their place in the game, and a wider audience debating what they actually want from the sport – three hours of throwaway nonsense on a Friday night or a proper head to head challenge, one with national pride at stake, and personal honour.

Perhaps Test cricket isn’t dead and buried after all. T20 is part of the throwaway chewing gum culture. But the thing with chewing gum is the flavour doesn't last forever.