Cricket 2.0

by Tim Wigmore

  In Test and ODI cricket the length of the contest afforded batsmen greater scope for large individual scores and the hundred – big enough to be an alluring three figures but not so big that it was unattainable – was a totemic landmark. From 2003 to 2019 in Test cricket the milestone was reached every 19 individual innings and in ODIs it was reached every 34 individual innings. But in T20, the length and nature of the contest made hundreds rare. Attacking at the rate which enabled a batsman to score a hundred involved too much risk for it to be a realistic or regular achievement. On average a T20 hundred was scored every 290 individual innings. Yet by the end of 2018 Gayle had scored 21 T20 hundreds – 14 more than the next most and the same as the next three best players combined. He reached three figures every 17 innings that he played, meaning that a Chris Gayle T20 century was more regular than a Test match century. Nothing better embodied how he mastered the demands of T20 batsmanship.

  ***

  In basketball, three-point shots are those further away from the hoop, so they are riskier and more likely to fail than two-point attempts from closer. That much was well established.

  But in recent years analysts in the NBA basketball league have made a startling observation. Although three-pointers are indeed hazardous, they have a higher expected points return than two-pointers from closer. Three-pointers have a 50% greater pay-off, rendering them a shot beloved by analysts – including Houston Rockets general manager, and computer science graduate Daryl Morey. In consecutive seasons in 2016/17 and 2017/18, Houston broke the record for the number of threes in any single NBA season. In 2017/18, 42% of their shots were three-point attempts – comfortably the most for any team in any season. It was also the year in which Houston won more matches than ever before in their history. They were not just playing a better game than their opponents; they were playing a radically different one.

  The growth of the six in T20 mirrored the ascent of the three in the NBA, which have more than doubled since 2000. The six, like the three in basketball, has a 50% greater pay-off than the previous highest scoring shot, more than making up for it being harder to execute. Both the six and the three represent the marriage of the athletically spectacular and analytically shrewd.

  Increased use of data analysis in cricket has been one of a number of factors – alongside stronger players, bigger bats and power-hitting training – to cause a surge in the rate of six hitting in T20. In 2012 a six was hit every 28 balls. By 2018 that had fallen to one every 20 balls.

  Balls per Six in T20 Cricket by Year

  Year

  Balls per Six

  2008

  27

  2009

  28

  2010

  27

  2011

  27

  2012

  27

  2013

  25

  2014

  24

  2015

  23

  2016

  23

  2017

  21

  2018

  20

  This is not a normal cyclical shift of the sort common in sport. It speaks of an altogether more fundamental change. From being regarded as the sport’s kamikaze shot, the six is now often viewed as its prudent, percentage option – simply the most efficient way to score runs.

  The ascent of the six in cricket was a window into how the sports data revolution is not just changing how sports teams prepare and train, but also the essence of how sports are played.

  Gayle has never seemed like a cricketer to pay much heed to analytics. This image, so carefully cultivated, concealed his great wisdom. More than any other player of his age, Gayle grasped that boundary hitting would be dominant in T20. And so he developed a unique batting style that revolved almost entirely around hitting fours and, especially, sixes.

  In all forms of cricket when batsmen first arrive at the crease they typically take some time to ‘play themselves in’. They familiarise themselves with the pace and bounce of the pitch and get used to the opposition bowlers. In Test cricket, with very little time pressure or importance placed on scoring rate, this period can sometimes consume many deliveries. But the shorter the format, the more important scoring rate becomes, and the less significant wicket preservation.

  Despite the intense pressure on batsmen in T20 to score quickly, Gayle adopted a method defined by an unusually slow, careful start. Across the first ten balls of his innings, 59% of Gayle’s balls faced were dot balls, the highest proportion of any player in the world. In Gayle’s first ten balls he played no shot to 11% of deliveries and defended 20%, both well above the global average of 2% and 10%. Yet this caution was carefully calculated: Gayle’s extraordinary destructive power meant he could make up for his slow start. Those early periods were essential to Gayle’s acceleration. Gayle trusted that his effectiveness in attack was greatly increased by affording himself time to play himself in.

  He also eschewed another of the common tropes of T20 thinking: the importance of scoring singles even when playing defensive shots, so as to prevent the total from being bogged down, especially at the outset of an innings. Gayle took a very different view. He regarded sharply run singles as an unnecessary extra risk, and so virtually eliminated the run-out as a form of dismissal. Over his career Gayle has been run out 3% of the time, compared to an average of 10% for all batsmen.

  Gayle was able to make up for his slow starts because of his astonishing attacking ability. As a teenager Gayle was slenderly built but imbued with sumptuous natural timing. Early footage of Gayle at the start of his international career showed that, despite a lean frame, his height gave him great presence at the crease, which he capitalised on with long levers and powerful wrists. Even as a young batsman making his way in international cricket he was always a natural boundary hitter – relying not on muscular strength or crisp footwork, just a good eye and scintillating natural timing.

  It wasn’t until the mid 2000s, when T20 was beginning to boom, that Gayle began to change. Hours in the gym turned Gayle from a rangy kid into a powerhouse. His figure was transformed from lean and athletic to imposing and muscular. What Gayle lost in agility he made up for in power; even mishits often went for a boundary. When playing an attacking shot Gayle scored at a strike rate of 229.42, the fastest attacking strike rate of any player in the world.

  Such was Gayle’s attacking power, not only was he content to take longer before accelerating than other players but once he got going he continued to adopt markedly different tactics. Gayle recognised that his attacking prowess meant attempting to score through non-boundary attempts was an inefficient approach to run scoring: why run three twos or six ones when he could hit one ball for six for considerably less effort and not risk being run out? Of course, occasionally he could be caught attempting to hit sixes but the pay-off was greater.

  Gayle’s approach was almost binary: all-out attack or resolute defence, with very little in between. He did not attempt to score off 20% of the balls he faced over his career, the highest proportion of any player in the world. When he did attack, he scored faster than anyone else.

  But while Gayle’s approach minimised risk for his own innings it carried great risk for his team. By taking so long to get going and by rarely running speedily between the wickets, Gayle increased the potential positive impact of his performance greatly but at a cost of increasing his potential negative impact. If Gayle faced a large number of deliveries but then got out before he could catch up he would have consumed a large proportion of his team’s resources to lay the platform for an acceleration that never came.

  In the 2012 T20 World Cup final against Sri Lanka, Gayle faced 16 balls. He made just three runs, only playing five attacking shots. The West Indies went on to win but Gayle’s innings comprised 13% of his team’s deliveries while contributing 2% of their total runs.

  Lesser players batting like this would have been disastrous; for Gayle, it was all part of the thrill. His high stakes game inverted the normal rules
of T20. ‘If Gayle bats six dot balls, then from a bowler’s point of view you’re thinking, “Crap – he’s six balls more into his innings,” as opposed to thinking, “Oh good, that’s six dots,”’ explained Carlos Brathwaite, who has frequently bowled to Gayle in T20 leagues and captained him for the West Indies T20 side.

  In May 2015, Gayle arrived for his first game for Somerset, three years after they had originally signed him, only for him to withdraw after a rapprochement with the West Indies. His schedule was so relentless that Gayle had not even had time to have a net in England by the time he arrived on a chilly early summer’s evening at Chelmsford, Essex’s compact ground, for his debut in county cricket.

  A supporting actor cannot afford to play with the crowd’s patience. When the lead role does, it only adds to the allure. In pursuit of Essex’s 176, the conventional wisdom had it that Somerset needed to exploit the Powerplay – the first six overs, when only two men were allowed outside the 30-yard circle.

  With Gayle even leaves assumed a certain theatrical quality. Again and again, he moved his bat exaggeratedly inside the line of the ball, a man not so much leaving the ball alone as trying to get as far away from it as possible. Only off his sixth ball, with a gentle nudge to midwicket, did Gayle score his first run. Yet still he remained almost comatose; after 18 balls, all but two deliveries of the Powerplay, Gayle had just six runs, leaving Somerset scoring at under a run a ball. He continued to defend the ball with ostentatious care and a certain arrogance – a belief that he didn’t need to play by the normal rules of the sport and could place a greater value upon his wicket. And he was right, too.

  Then it happened: from arch-defender, Gayle was suddenly affronted by the puny size of Chelmsford’s boundaries. So he cleared them – and the flats that encircled the ground while he was at it. The foot movement was laconic, the power and timing completely natural. And as the Gaylestorm went from dormant beast to awesome reality, so the Gayle effect made an appearance too. As the margins to avoid being pummelled for six became more minute with each delivery, so Essex wilted: just after Gayle reached 50, they bowled five wides down the leg side – runs that he would get no credit for but had earned. Then a cut to third man – hit hard and low, but straight to the fielder – was spilled. The next three deliveries were thundered for four, four and then six, straight over the scaffolding. By the time he was done, Gayle had scored 86 off his last 41 balls, setting up Somerset’s heist.

  He had won his team the game, naturally, and hearts and minds to boot. The normally tribal Chelmsford crowd could not resist a standing ovation when he was finally dismissed. Gayle, like a great raconteur, would ensure that all at the ground departed talking about him. He dutifully signed autographs and posed for smiling selfies with the crowd after; he even obliged some who requested a kiss on the cheeks.

  ‘Beautiful,’ Gayle declared the occasion. ‘It’s too cold for me but I stuck it out. I didn’t want to make such a slow start and then get out because I know with my capabilities, I knew the runs would come.’

  Gayle’s entire stint with Somerset in 2015 lasted only three games. He still managed 328 runs – and 29 sixes. In a league that lasted three months, no one managed more.

  It seemed to speak of a cricketer with transcendental power.

  ***

  The Gayle lore was built upon being at once an embodiment of cricket’s future and a throwback, an antidote to the age of protein shakes and fitness obsession. It is an image that he very deliberately cultivated, publicly detailing his journey from one nightclub to the next and anointing himself the ‘Universe Boss’.

  Yet Gayle is much less universally adored than he liked to proclaim. The last years of his career have been sullied by several accusations of sexism – most notoriously when he asked a female Australian TV presenter for a drink live on air during a game then told her ‘don’t blush, baby’, comments that permeated the news cycle in Australia, the Caribbean and far beyond. No club in Australia’s Big Bash, promoting a family-friendly image, ever signed Gayle up again. Gayle’s status within the cricket world was sullied.

  The controversies surrounding Gayle, his self-depiction as a nonchalant hedonist, and the show that he created – one IPL insider said that Gayle needed five people just to manage him – obscured his own profound self-understanding about his game, one of the hallmarks of his T20 greatness. He did not train more than his opponents; instead, he trained smarter than them. Gayle used scenario work – setting particular targets to get – when batting in the nets, and practised by getting specific bowlers to bowl overs to him, rather than different bowlers bowling each ball as is the norm. This is the nearest to the mano-a-mano conflict that T20 represents, and honed Gayle for sizing up and bringing down opponents in a clinical, cold way. He also used range hitting – batting on the wicket in the ground without any nets – to hone his confidence, allowing him to see just how far, and how crisp, his blows were.

  These were his general routines. But Gayle also prepared specifically for each game. ‘You think about the mix: four or five bowlers, their attributes, how the captain might use those against you, what damage you can lay upon them,’ he explained in Six Machine, his autobiography. ‘You put those things in your mind as early as possible so you can sleep on it and cement ideas into actions. When you wake up, you refresh your mind and go back to the big thoughts. And when you go out there your mind will click back to those images and thoughts, and you will be ready.’

  He has also thought deeply about his approach to T20, tailoring an approach designed to marry brutality with consistency. ‘You’ve got to be smart. Wild swinging won’t win you games,’ Gayle wrote. ‘It’s not Test cricket, but it’s still ball on to sweet spot of bat, and that means having a look – at the pitch, at the bowler, at what the ball is doing . . . I tear attacks to pieces, but I stalk my prey first. You have to calculate. You analyse the bowling attack. “Right, these two, they’ll bowl two overs. Occasionally this one, he’ll bowl three overs to try to get me out.” You work it out, do the maths . . . I analyse every bowler. I analyse the entire game. Who am I up against? How can they hurt me? How can I hurt them more? You learn the game every time you go out there.’

  As he amassed more experience of T20, Gayle learned to ‘give yourself a little feel, give yourself a couple of balls. You learn what you can do, and how much damage you can do when. So now we’re looking at the bigger picture.’ He learned, too, that hitting a six is not about aiming to hit the ball as far as you can. ‘You trust your bat. Make good contact and that ball is gone . . . Try to muscle it and you will lose your shape. When you’re going for maximum power your head is all over the place. Your eyes totally gone off the ball. You’ll top-edge it, mishit it or miss it, because there’s no actual balance. It’s the sound that tells you. The sound tells you it’s gone.’

  Gayle’s image as the six-hitter nonpareil concealed his adaptability. In a 2017 Caribbean Premier League (CPL) game in Florida, for instance, Gayle recognised how a sluggish pitch would only become harder to bat on as the day progressed. Norms were swiftly recalibrated: sixes were mostly resisted, smart placement and sharp running was back in vogue. He batted throughout his side’s innings, undefeated on 66 from 55 balls – an innings almost the antithesis of the classic Gayle T20 innings. Twenty-eight of his runs had come from singles, the most of any innings of his career. St Kitts and Nevis, his team, ended up on 132 for 3 from 20 overs – a highly peculiar total, since they lost only three wickets yet ended up with a score that would normally be well under par. But St Kitts won when their opposition’s run chase failed to get going on a pitch that became very difficult for batting later in the game, just as Gayle had envisaged. Throughout the entire 2017 CPL season, Gayle, who had been out of form in the lead-up to the tournament and struggling with back injuries, exhibited his batting intelligence, reining in his attacking instincts when prudent; three unbeaten first innings fifties ended up contributing to victories.

  Still, for all Gayle’s adr
oit thinking about the art of T20, he was a reluctant bystander of cricket’s age of marginal gains. Gayle was not only a unique batsman, he was also unique in his very way of maintaining his game in between matches. Indeed, his core method was so well grooved that he scarcely needed to do any maintaining at all.

  ‘Chris didn’t practise last year, very little – just had centre wicket, a few hits every blue moon. Likes his throw-downs before a game, and that’s it,’ said Jamaica Tallawahs coach Paul Nixon in 2017, after coaching Gayle in previous years and then releasing him before that season. ‘He holds it mentally, and he’s very good.’

  Yet if he batted like a cricketer of 2025, sometimes he could field like a cricketer of 1925.

  ‘In the field, he really struggled, and more people hit and ran to him because he couldn’t get down and move very quickly, but you know he’s going to make up for it with his runs, and that’s the balance that you have,’ Nixon observed. ‘Fielding-wise? That’s his off-cuts, his weakest cut. Because he’s worn out. His body’s played so much cricket over the years, and he’s lifted so many weights to keep strong to hit the ball hard, and all the rest of it. He’s feeling the pain now.’

  But perhaps the relative lack of interest in marginal gains – the quick single, or the run saved in the field with an athletic dive – was understandable. For Gayle makes tools to gain, or save, a run here or there, look like child’s play set against the serious business of adding runs half a dozen at a time. And so he drove opponents to radical approaches to try to nullify his threat. In the 2012 World Twenty20 semi-final, Australia restricted Gayle to facing just 18 balls in the first ten overs, and 41 overall, out of 120, through a concerted attempt to deprive Gayle of the strike. It didn’t work. Gayle still had time to plunder six sixes, making 75 not out to set up a crushing West Indies victory.