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'Christopher "Chris" Henry Gayle' (born 21 September, 1979 in Kingston, Jamaica) is a West Indian cricketer. He is a hard-hitting left-handed batsman who can bowl right-arm off spin when called upon. Gayle has a various amount of quality shots that he can perform.
Gayle played for the West Indies at youth international level after he made his first-class debut aged 19 for Jamaica. He played his first one-day international 11 months later, and his first Test match 6 months after that.
Gayle, who normally opens the innings when he plays for the West Indies, is a destructive batsman who is most effective playing square of the wicket. In July 2001, Gayle (175), together with Daren Ganga (89) established the record for opening partnerships at Queens Sports Club, Bulawayo when they put on 214 together against Zimbabwe.
However, generally speaking he had a slow start to his international career, but invigorated it in 2002, ending the year with three centuries against India in November and becoming the fourth West Indian to score 1,000 runs in a calendar year. Along with Sanath Jayasuriya and Brian Lara he is the only player in One Day International history to have 3 or more scores of 150.
In 2005 Gayle was involved in the dispute between the West Indies Cricket Board and a number of players over sponsorship issues. These players had personal sponsorship deals with Cable and Wireless, who used to sponsor West Indian cricket. However, the West Indies are now sponsored by C&W's rivals Digicel and the WICB demanded the players dropped C&W. After one Test match where all the players were dropped, Gayle cut his C&W deal and rejoined the Test side for the second Test against South Africa. However, he had a poor series until the fourth Test, where he made his career-best: a match-saving 317. It was the first ever triple century against South Africa and up until Mahela Jayawardene made 374, it was the highest Test score against them.
In August 2005, Gayle joined Worcestershire for the rest of the English season, playing eight matches. He made two half-centuries in three first class matches and two half-centuries in five one-day matches, and won one Man of the Match award in the one-day National League. However, Worcestershire were relegated after Gayle made 1 in the final match against Lancashire.
Gayle was named Player of the 2006 Champions Trophy, where West Indies nearly defended their title won in 2004, only to be defeated in the final by the No. 1 ranked team in the world Australia. Gayle scored three centuries and totalled 474 runs, 150 more than any other batsman, and also took eight wickets in as many matches.
Gayle, in keeping with the rest of the West Indies team, had a poor World Cup in 2007. He recorded a series of low scores; the one exception being a blistering 79 off 58 balls against England in the West Indies' final match.

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Controversies

References

Controversies

Gayle is regarded as a calm and cool cricketer, but in March 2006, he was charged with conduct contrary to the spirit of cricket during a Test against New Zealand, but was found not guilty.^[1] In October 2006, in his side's first match of the Champions Trophy, he was involved in a controversy with the Australian batsman Michael Clarke. While Clarke was batting, Gayle was observed to repeatedly come to Clarke and say something, more than once in the space of a few overs. He was fined 30% of his match fee for this. Gayle, writing in an Internet column, remarked that he believed the "instigator" should also be punished in such cases.

References

★ CricketArchive page on Chris Gayle

★ Cricinfo page on Chris Gayle

★ ''75 Years of West Indies Cricket 1928-2000'' by Ray Goble and Keith AP Sandiford ISBN 1-870518-78-0

★ (BBC)

★ (Highest Scores)