There was consternation that Gayle was reportedly not required to meet the fitness standards which ruled out highly-regarded batsman Sherfane Rutherford and T20 match-winning spinner Sunil Narine. The peripatetic Gayle has also struggled for runs in his global franchise league commitments and is without a 50 in his last 10 innings. This meagre run of form led to an unsavoury media spat this week with former West Indies fast bowler Curtly Ambrose who suggested that Gayle was not “an automatic choice”. It’s all a far cry from his mesmerising, undefeated 175 off 66 balls he made in the IPL in 2013, still the highest score ever made in a T20 game.
However, he refuses to see himself as a spent force, believing that the 2021 T20 World Cup in Oman and the UAE will be a fitting farewell for a player who has often been the right man in the right place at the right moment. At the inaugural World Cup in 2007 against South Africa, he scored the first ever century in the format — 117 off 57 balls in Johannesburg. In West Indies’ victorious 2012 campaign, he hit three half-centuries — including an unbeaten 75 in the semi-final win over Australia. He also possesses a burning desire to have the final say in a T20 World Cup final having made just seven runs in the 2012 and 2016 showpieces.
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